I suggest readers study Modern Monetary Theory about deficits and debt. We can afford anything we want as long as inflation is controlled by the right amount of taxes.
1
@baldski
Assuming you accept MMT, the question then becomes where is the money from deficit spending directed?
R: deficit -> owners, investor class, passive income. Rising income inequality.
D: deficit -> infrastructure, education, advanced research. Benefits spread across all citizens, to benefit society as a whole.
8
Mr. Suderman is not exactly being forthright in his essay. Those deficits he mentioned in Obama's first term were also directly related to GOP policies: The two wars and expansion of Medicare. Combined with the Great Recession (a result of the GOP mantra of deregulation, in this case the financial markets), fully 80% of the debt created during Obama's first term was the result of policies and actions he had no part of. Face it, budgets just don't reset when new presidents are elected. That intellectual dishonesty is why conservatives can never be trusted. Lowering taxes don't increase growth and Democrats usually are better at budget control than Republicans.
Nice try though...at least you are honest enough to admit Trump is blowing up the budget. But don't worry, when Dems are in control again we will clean up your side's messes like always (remember Clinton's balanced budget).
7
I don't recall President Obama proposing to repeal Medicare Part D nor did he propose immediately ending the two wars. Nor did he propose disbanding DHS. He also authored a stimulus plan that cut taxes and further increased spending. I find it odd that you assert that Obama and the democratic majority were powerless to control budgets and policy during the first years of his term.
I don't understand why the idea of free public college is considered "socialistic". In 1970s I went to CUNY for free. I got my degree and as a result I was able to get a high paying job and paid more taxes to NYC. The city's investment in me has been paid back many times over. Free college is one of the best investments in the future of our country.
11
Before Republicans became a nationalist party, I used to enjoy discussing market solutions with them. Here's a way to fund universal healthcare, give workers' more influence over corporate America, make payroll taxes less regressive, cut taxes for the bottom 90%, remove disincentives to work, and simplify hiring:
Get rid of the regressive 15.2% payroll tax. Replace it with a 13.5% VAT (sales tax) and give everyone a $3,000 rebate for taxes paid on living expenses, including children. It would be revenue neutral and reduce the tax burden for workers who *spend* less than $133,000/year ($266k joint) and retirees who spend less than $51,500/year ($103k joint). Distribute $3,900 annually (in addition to the $3,000 tax rebate) from VAT collections to every American, including children and people over 65. That $3,900 distribution can only be used for retirement or education expenses. Automatically invest the $3,900 annual distribution in stocks (broad index fund) and Treasuries, allocated based on one's age.
A $3,900 annual distribution compounded at 7% (average stock market return over the past 60 years adjusted for inflation) for 18 years = $145,800. Average cost of tuition at a private college for 4 years = $140,000.
1
Tax and spend Democrats.
Borrow and spend Republicans.
Which one is more fiscally responsible?
9
The US has a blended economic system where most things are done by private and public corporations and a few things are done by government entities. The healthcare system that has evolved does not fit the lassez faire free market economy because the service providers often do not no what the consumer price of their service will be. Conversely consumers can not shop for the best price because each provider has hidden price agreements with insurance companies. Furthermore, almost a third of all medical costs are wasted by going to fund the accounting and insurance industry related to it. Thus, a single payer government paid for system of independent businesses providing the services is the only logical solution to reduce medical system costs.
116
@John Knoblock: Well said. Also, consider that this would also drastically reduce workers' compensation costs, practically eliminate the need for the VA medical system and possibly spur small business innovation. I acquired a business in the UK rather than here due to the uncertainties of US health insurance costs and out-of-control workers' compensation costs.
60
@John Knoblock.....With ACA, a Gop modeled plan, our taxes subsidize insurance profits, so more uninsured can get coverage.
In other capitalist democracies, their taxes can go to paying for their health care, since insurance profits aren't 1st priority. If the don't have single payer, they have insurance mandates, but it's accepted for premiums to be regulated so citizens can afford them.
So what's common there is off the table here.
The GOP would much rather waste millions to preserve private profit, than save millions by letting govt regulate or pay for crucial services---thus setting a precedent that may reduce profits further.
So we pay for the world's most expensive, and profitable h/c system, sold to the public as the way to preserve a distorted idea of "American Freedom."
22
@Meredith: you still fail to explain why Obama -- faced with total power in 2009 and a veto-proof Congressional majority in both Houses -- choose a lousy, worthless FAILED Romneycare as the basis of his "reforms"...KNOWING it gave vast money to BIg Insurance and Big Pharma...indeed, hiring Big Insurance execs to WRITE THE NEW LAW, favoring themselves....and then duplicitiously sold it to the American public per Jonathan Gruber -- laughing at our gullibility.
Republicans running up big deficits is not a bug. It's not even accidental. It's a deliberate part of the plan.
Republicans deliberately run up large deficits when in power in order to stop Democrats from being able to enact their policy preferences when Democrats are in power. If you don't have a huge deficit, there's no ready-made excuse for opposing popular programs. So you have to make the deficit really big when you are in power.
This is the third time this has happened, and the electorate's memory is so short and it is so partisan that it falls for the same ploy over and over again.
It still baffles me that this isn't more widely recognized and reported on. The Republican position on deficits is probably the biggest political con of the last 30 years and yet hardly ever does anyone actually explain what is going on. Instead at most you get articles like this that pretend it's just an issue of not caring.
633
@A
Please explain why the liberal Democratic controlled states of Illinois, CT & NJ are bankrupt with huge unfunded public pensions.
What is the cure for Illinois ??
Wealthy people are moving out of state.
Baby boomers are selling their upscale houses in CT to avoid the very high property taxes.
2
@A
I'm thinking the media who gave El Trumpo so much free press which got him elected has something to do with that failure of memory.
1
@PeterPlease explain why the confederacy is still leaching off
California.
And.
New York.
Actually, it's the progressives (or socialist Democrats or whatever you call the far left) that has moved me away from voting Dem. No, I didn't vote for Trump and don't know how to vote in 2020, but if a 'Sanders-like' candidate runs for the Dem party, I will NOT vote Dem. Perhaps locally, but at the national level the Dems are behaving like they don't know what they stand for. Why are the Dems so afraid of a minority of 20 somethings and left over communist leaning members that they are changing their approach to anything practical?
3
The premise of this piece is Republican hypocrisy on deficits and debt has given political strength to a faction, who believe that free-market capitalism has not and will not supply certain services such as healthcare and render an economically acceptable income distribution. An examination of history will underscore that this belief is true.
Therefore, to correct the long-standing flaw in the two party planks those who want to remedy these issues must figure out a way to evolve what we now have to a better welfare/free-market state that will continue improving the standard of living in the U.S. and creating industries, products and services that are competitive and environmentally responsible in global markets.
Achieving a politically acceptable income distribution while meeting the above goals is not easy but it would be wise to try. This would mean that we accept that we are going to evolve away from fossil fuels as our primary source of energy for our standard of living. This means the government must seize the initiative to develop and test alternatives to fossil fuel for electricity and transportation. This will be challenging beyond our imagination but we must because it would be an accident if the capital would emerge to implement this technology.
Dr. James Powell, the inventor of superconducting Maglev, has proposed an international space-based solar power system that beams very cheap power to Earth and a global Maglev surface transport network.
3
"Over and over, Republicans cast Mr. Obama’s unusually high deficits..."
Fake news.
Obama was handed a $1.1 trillion deficit by Bush. He brought it down to $439 billion, a 60% reduction.
It was not his deficit and it was not unusually high for the times.
10
Mr. Suderman's analysis misses the point of GOP policy over the past 4 decades - their hostility to effective, viable and functioning national, federal government. While placating religious zealotry, incorporating nationalist/racist ideology, redirecting wealth to but the narrowest of those privileged few, reestablishing effective xenophobic apartheid, and destroying any environmental protection, their who ideology seems to boil about destroying the legal and administrative and judicial checks and balances at the (secular) federal level towards the worst forces of America since WW2. Their nihilistic goal is to delegitimatize and tear the system - with all its checks and balances - down, and in the nasty process enrich and place themselves and constituents in whatever place of social and economic hegemony. This is has been evident for years. Given their current cast of Bozos and incompetents now in power, I do hope that the majority of Americans stop drinking the cool-aid, take a deep fresh breath of reason, and vote in November.
6
Anybody else think it's time for a wealth tax to help with our debt problem? Since most of the wealth is held by a small fraction of the population, you'd think the idea would sell.
3
Property tax is wealth tax. Taxing stocks makes no sense as the market price is uncertain and depends on the size of the redemption to pay this tax.
Given that we now live in a global community of ABUNDANCE.....not scarcity......We need to stop repeating the mantra from 1930s. The main challenge in the 21st Century is NOT to reform American Society, which, by and large has done a very good job of implementing "socialist" solutions(the New Deal....and its encumbant Central Bureaucracy).....and America's subsidizing of Europe's Socialist models....effectively buying loyalty from Western Europe......But the Reform the REST of the World. Since the Vietnam War it has become painfully obvious that the rest of the world REJECTS americanization(what we are trained to call "globalization").....We are caught attempting to control people who have nothing good to offer America. They seem to be content with old style authoritarianism, inadequate infrastructures, poor distribution of wealth.
1
A former family member of Donald Trump reported that Trump had a book of Hitler's words.
I have read Hitler's words to make try with others to make sure that a person like Hitler never comes to power in America.
Read the following Hitler quotes in order to judge if D. Trump behaves and believes in these ideas, ways and means.
Hitler's words: "It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation."
"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think."
"Strength lies not in defense but in attack."
"The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one."
"Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong."
"The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force."
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. It is not truth that matters, but victory."
" I do not see why man should not be just as cruel as nature."
"If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed."
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
"All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."
5
Socialism was the proposed solution to a set of challenges that no longer exists. It was an appropriate model for the Industrial Age of centralized planning and mass production. The Industrial Age is now a bygone era. Far from being "progressive"....the Social Democrats are the most "reactionary" and "REgressive" members of American Society, desparately clinging to a tired, shop-worn solution that no longer fits the Global Electronic Communication Age....peer-to-peer....somewhat "flat"...with multiple standards and customized production of goods and services.
1
Populism works in either political direction.
Mr. Suderman makes the classic mistake of assuming there is still a Republican Party. And therein lies his total confusion and unreasoned strategy....directed at a target that no longer exists!. The GOP self-destructed, with the Bush Minion wing now allied with the DNC desparately trying to preserve the Status Quo...the Old New World Order so to speak. The other half of so-called republicans are unorganized....variously spouting out disconnected catch phrases like "true conservative values", "Make America Great Again" and "whatever Rush Limbaugh said today". The Democrats are frayed around the edges but are still held firmly in check by DNC Corporate Headquarters. America will finally break free for a great 21st Century when 50% of democrats finally recognize that the DNC is NOT the Democrat Party ... and find common ground with the right wingers currently running around directionless.
As a former resident of what is now the NY 14th Congressional District, I am delighted with Ms. Ocasio Cortez' victory. But let's not get carried away with imposing that template on the country. She received about 15,000 votes against about 10,000 for the incumbent, a comparatively low turnout, and the district has changed dramatically over the years in favor of Hispanics and Asians and away from the old Irish-Italian political establishment. Instead let's look at the significant recent showings of broad-based Democrats in other parts of the country.
I wouldn't vote for another Republican if they got Teddy Roosevelt's heart started again. As far as I'm concerned, the Republican Party has poisoned the well for all time. I'm through. I think the rabid elephant needs to be put to sleep.
4
I believe it was P.J. O'Rourke who said that Republicans run on the theory that government is bad at everything, then get themselves elected to prove it.
8
"Peter Suderman is the managing editor at Reason.com."
So what are the Reason libertarian "the best government is no government" guys trying to do with this op-ed?
The bait is the first half of the column about Republican hypocrisy, greed, and incompetence. That is no news to anyone. The Trumpers only care about the racism, sexism, and nativism, math is not a priority. Liberals already know all this.
The target of the column is liberals, but the point of the column is independents.
The hook is this line: "if one of the Democrats’ brightest young stars isn’t overly concerned about basic budget math, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that much of the rest of the party will follow." As in, c'mon liberals, demand that your candidates ignore fiscal responsibility, the water's fine.
Media madness aside, please recognize Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for what she is -- a very smart, talented, promising rookie. By dint of hard work, inspiring message, sleeping incumbent, and very low (13%!) turnout, AOC scored a big upset. All props to her. But it is very premature to call her one of the party's "brightest young stars," let alone someone who is going to determine the party's platform.
But the point of the column is to sucker Democratic politicians into fiscal irresponsibility so that Republicans can once again demagogue on this. Because the sad fact is, independents are more comfortable with tax breaks for the rich than health care and education for the poor and middle class.
1
I'm for the democratic socialists but not for Medicare as it is for all. It's essential that the Republican ban on the US collectively bargaining with Big Pharma be overturned. That would be good for everyone, except the drug companies, but they would survive, nevertheless.
1
Hypocrisy is a bi-partisan affliction unfortunately. Be careful what you wish for social dems!
"Think tanks from across the political spectrum estimate a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system, the challenge would be to finance the enormous increase in government spending on health care. "
The key fact that's always been hiding in plain sight about the scary "32 million dollar cost" or whatever figure you prefer is that those medical insurance costs would no longer have to be borne by private industry, other than most likely a partial match of the inevitable increase in Medicare tax withholding.
That is not exactly insignificant, and is something that if objectively considered by mainstream corporate america outside of the ideologically conservative intellectual bubble they have been captured by they would most likely be enthusiastically in favor of.
For some of the large multinational corporations, medical insurance represents 20% of their overhead. How can an objectively rational actor dismiss making that cost disappear by nationalizing health care costs?
3
Costs of Universal Health Care, Basic Income, and Higher
Education are a lot less than you think.
Here are some rough estimates.
Universal Health Care (according to Wikipedia):
Canada universal health care cost per capita $4,753
US health care cost per capita $9,892
Difference per capita $5,139
Times US population of 330 million
= $1,696 billion Savings
Universal Basic Income (according to site below)
of $1,000/mo (figured as a negative income tax) keeping Medicare+Medicaid and Social Security but eliminating most other transfer payments is about
= -$1,160 billion Cost
So far, the savings to the Government is about
= $536 billion Savings
A tidy hunk of change.
See the very interesting web site:
https://dqydj.com/scripts/fullhtml/base_2015_negativeincometax.html
Universal Higher Education:
It's so complicated that I'm not able to deal with it on short notice. However (1) Education should give value to the Republic, probably at least equal to its cost. (2) A large part of outstanding loans for education cannot be repaid, and so never will be.
2
The SOCIALISTS ARE COMING!! and the Republicans are doing nothing to stop them. You seem to have overlooked that "mainstream" Dems are doing nothing either. That's because they've become Republican-lites. This used to be called "the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party" and before that, just the "Democratic Party". Expanding medical coverage. protecting worker rights. maintaining social security. etc were mainstream Democratic talking points. Compared to the economic and social costs of everyone (except the ultra-rich) going bankrupt and living in cardboard boxes, I'd say this is the soul of fiscal responsibility.
2
Since the Bill Clinton era, the Democrats have been the party of fiscal responsibility AND societal improvement -- making life in our country more prosperous and healthier for EVERYONE. They have not always succeeded. They always endured fanatical, dishonest opposition from the Republicans at every turn. But that is how they have tried to govern, and often with great success (e.g., the Clinton and Obama presidencies rescued us from Republican debt and set in motion broad trends that favored most of us in many ways).
In contrast, the Republicans have been the party that runs up impossible debts to provide enormous windfalls to the mega-rich and to fund absurd levels of military spending (along with grotesque levels of private-prison spending and spending to fund the militarization of the southern border). The Republicans are always hostile to using spending to fund anything that makes our lives better or healthier.
Why anyone other than a plutocrat without a conscience would vote for Republicans continues to escape me, no matter what quibbles you might have with Democrats, who at least are tying to do the right thing.
4
@Zola Clinton had a Republican Congress . . . .
The hypocrisy is a problem, but the lying is unacceptable. Whenever I see a line like:
"Even making generous assumptions, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s additional revenue is still not enough to offset the cost. And that doesn’t even include the rest of her platform."
I assume that anything from reason.com or other right wing organs is calculated dishonesty.
2
We've known for quite a while that the Republican stance on deficits was just that.
With Trump we have also found that they are more than willing to attack veterans for political gain.
We have seen that the evangelical clamor over the years about character and morality is just so much hot air.
They have shown their concern about dishonest politicians (a legitimate gripe to be sure) by electing the most dishonest non-politician they could find.
The only way they have been able to justify any of this is to convince themselves, somehow, that the Democrats are so much worse.
2
Republican contradictions and hypocrisy - so what else is new? Deficits BAD when Democrats have the purse strings. But deficits GOOD when the GOP has the controls. Republicans have zero credibility when it comes to the budget (and now, of course, pretty much anything else). The truth has been clear since the mid 1980's at least - that the Republicans have proven completely unable to match a tax cut with a spending decrease. It just has never happened. So yearly deficits ballooned under them on a par or even higher than under Democrats. They would never touch entitlements like Social Security because of the obvious outrage from the demographic that mostly votes for them, no attempts were made to decrease the size of the Federal bureaucracy (though many campaign promises were made) and they never showed the courage to seriously pare down the bloated sacred cow called the military. All they care about is the philosophy and the principle of the tax cut itself, and not how to fund the government. Remember, these are the same people that gave us the mantra of 'supply side economics', so does anything more need be said?
3
"Democratic Socialists, to be precise — remain a relatively small niche within the Democratic Party,"
FDR to day would be called a "Democratic Socialist", this writer needs to follow what has been happening more closely, if any thing we are returning to what FDR started.
Trump and the 1% are trying to return us to a "feudal society", the 1% and "serfs and slaves".
5
You sound so reasonable and pragmatic, trying to get at the facts of the money, but you are still trapped in a biased, ideological, Reaganite view of the Budget. The issue is: will the average American spend more or less? Nationalized Health will mean the average american WILL EARN MORE AND SPEND LESS. That is the fact of the money. The rest is just ideology. Wake up.
2
The Con Don and his Robber Baron brethren have opened the door for WE THE PEOPLE to finally wake up and realize it is OUR United States of America and WE have the power.
No political party has the power. They simply reflect the ideas of the people in control right now.
A little research will show that people of all political leanings are working together to save/preserve/restore democratic governance in OUR America.
Socially Conscious Women are stepping up to take one-half the power and bring balance to OUR systems. Socially Conscious state attorney generals and governors are stepping up to stop The Con Don's attempts to destroy all the social goods and progress made since Teddy and FDR/Elanor Roosevelt.
WE ARE IN A CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS because The Con Don and his International Mafia Top 1% Global Financial Elite Robber Baron/radical religion Good Old Boys' cabal has gotten control of OUR governments at all levels through their 40+ year hostile financial takeover, which they funded with inherited wealth, OUR hard-earned taxpayer treasure and tax evasion.
It's time the media and our five living Past Presidents take on the Robber Barons if they truly care about OUR America - before they destroy it any more.
5
It's all about priorities.
we, as a country, can afford to do almost anything we put our minds too, and if that is tax cuts for the wealthy and increased defense spending, well, we can do that.
If it's to rebuild and invest in our infrastructure (heard anyone talk about that lately?) and give our kids a free college or trade education, we can do that.
there is so much wealth and so many worthwhile ways to spend our dollars.
But the voter must send the message as to how they want the money spent. Listen to your 2018 candidates and vote for those who agree with your priorities.
Don't get caught up in labels - listen to what your candidate would DO.
5
Reducing the deficit is easy, although not politically easy. Decide what our priorities for the country are, then raise taxes to pay for the ones chosen for implementation.
4
Nothing that AOC or Bernie says is new. It's not socialism. It's what FDR proposed in his 1944 State of the Union.
A Second Bill of Rights, or An Economic Bill of Rights.
"We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.
"Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job .....
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade ....;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being."
10
When anybody talks about the cost of universal healthcare they seem to forget that this isn't a totally new cost but mostly a replacement of a cost that burdens businesses and makes American workers more expensive in the global market. It also makes older workers less attractive to employers.
It also makes sense to go to a system that could look at runaway costs for medical care and make changes that could improve health outcomes while reducing costs.
If socialized health care is so bad, why do so many of our neighbors do so much better for less?
5
I do not agree with the statement made in this article that a single-payer system would cost 32 trillion over a decade. That might be true if the government would pay for people's health insurance without changing anything on the expense side of the equation. A single-payer system should only be introduced while at the same time drastically curtailing the expense side as well. The US has a health system where profits are the main driver. As a result, there is an incredible amount of overcharging, over-treating, over-prescribing and "free for all" robbery going on by hospitals, doctors, big pharma and other health providers. So a single-payer system should also introduce a mechanism to end this medical rip-off circus. The best way is the way Canada had done this: Nationalize hospitals and other health providers, drastically curtail big pharma and put doctors and specialist on the government payroll with strict norms for salaries and the allowed cost of procedures. Also, the concept of private health insurance should be ended; health insurance should be managed by the government strictly based on actual cost and on a non-profit basis. Also, the premiums should be dependent on individual income, wealthy people pay higher premiums than the poor. This way, Canada has managed to insure ALL its citizens for half the cost per person compared to people in the US.....
2
A solid point about GOP hypocrisy. But using Social Democrats” for “socialists” sidesteps a major issue. What have many socialists long wanted, as demonstrated by their statements and actions, and what do many of them still want...beyond social democracy? If what they want is Nordic or Swiss capitalism, why have they always praised socialist dictatorships? This isn’t reserved for Bernie’s and others’ long romance with the USSR. Current far left office holders and intellectuals long cheered Chavez as he installed a dictatorship in Venezuela. They still cheer dictatorship in Cuba. Why does democratic socialists of America website call for taking the means of production? Why do so many marchers call for ending capitalism?
Those of us who have lived in European welfare states, including 6 years in Nordic countries in my case, know that they are clearly capitalist, albeit with stronger social protections and higher taxes. Those who want Swiss public policies deserve a respectful hearing. But having spent many hours with those fighting to impose communism/Socialism in El Salvador, and having heard and read many on the American left praise Castro, Chavez, etc., I suspect that those folks were telling the dark truth then, and still believe it now. The hard left wants it’s definition of a socialist utopia, and even many on the left will resist replacing capitalism with socialism, as opposed to increasing social welfare.
Republican hypocrisy would lift all Democrats even more if it weren't for Fox (and other right wing) propaganda. Has a political party in the US ever been so dominated by hypocrisy? Not in my lifetime, and perhaps never.
6
I think the first sentence in this essay is incorrect. Republicans used to care for their Republic by helping human beings, though to a less extent than Democrats. It is the flooding of our Nation with Ayn Randians that give us the idea that Republicans detest all Social Programs. The underlying theory of Randians like Paul Ryan is Ethical Egoism, the thesis that it is WRONG to consider any one’s welfare other than YOUR OWN. Philosophy has shown time and again the absolute INvalidity of this theory and it’s frightening conclusion. The Koch Bros. are Randians. Libertarians believe it is wrong to help any one else. In grad school I had to miss a Lecture one semester & asked a Libertarian if I might look at her notes for that Lecture. She cited her orthodoxy of Ethical Egoism. It is a disgraced theory, a flawed philosophy and an abrogation og our altruistic genes & motivations. Even the Koch Bros. are having second thoughts.
3
Dems need to hammer their Republican opponents hard on only two topics:
1) Their massive tax tax cuts for the filthy rich.
1) Their systematic decimation of healthcare coverage for tens of millions of struggling Americans.
3
Thank you for this piece highlighting Republican hypocrisy. The writer should send this to every small town newspaper in states where the 12 billion dollar farm subsidy will be doled out.
3
As Steven Brill describes it in his new book, the country has been in a “Tailspin” over the last fifty years from which two dominant classes have evolved: 1) a privileged, protected minority, and the unprotected vulnerable majority. While Brill also identifies some positive signs and reform-minded reasons for optimism, it’s the current state he describes, not just Republican attitudes on debt and deficits, that has “opened the door” to the possibilities presented by democratic socialism.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have some relevant facts and current realities on her side.
3
With his first sentence, "To be a Republican is to oppose socialism," Suderman's editorial goes off the rails.
If you were to actually list all the positions of Republicans (or for that matter, Democrats, liberals or conservatives) seeking a unifying principle generating the list, you will find nothing. The Rep's list is a hodgepodge.
The only unifying notion is that the list (or the Dems' list) is good at winning elections. The list changes over time as public opinion changes and politicians tune their hodgepodges to get themselves elected.
When Dems and Reps, libs and cons, debate about whose hodgepodge is better, they appeal of bogus principles that unify and rationalize their hodgepodges.
Suppose people from another planet landed here and told that Republicans oppose the socialist sector and favor the capitalist sector of society, could they, using that principle, derive the Republican list of positions? Look at the record of Republican politicians -- do they support big military, or abolish it? Do they implement gov't's mass incarceration or not? Do they support medical licensing, an enforced union of doctors, increasing costs to consumers, or do they abolish it?
Do they support ICE, or abolish it? Do they raise tariffs, or abolish them? Have they disbanded the Post Office or gov't's schools and universities?
Debating hodgepodges requires accepting some bogus unifying principle. I am not playing Suderman's make-believe game.
4
Straight to the point. Well said.
The Christian/Republican stink that has pervaded America for so long, will not disappear overnight. They have made us the most war-mongering, guns and weapons proliferating, most jail-stuffing nation in the world. And now the only advanced nation not in the Climate Accord. The Christians of America are the swamp-dwellers. I judge the by their works.
Donald Trump is their work - supported by the great majority of white Christians. Yet these people may not be touched. Taboo to speak out against them. But, guess what. It's not illegal. The same 1st Amendment they have mis-used can also protect a picket line on the street in front of their disgusting churches.
If you want to effect a change in America - take it to the Christians. I believe the best that could be said for them: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." But, they will continue in their bigoted self-righteous Judas blasphemy until someone tells them what they do. The professional Christians, the priest and bishops, won't tell them. They are too busy keeping their hands clean.
4
On point, Tracy Rupp!
2
So where was the NY Times for the last 15 years while it was printing hundreds of credulous column-inches heralding the likes of Paul Ryan and Simpson and Bowles as honest and serious economic thinkers taking arms against the existential threat of deficit spending?
4
I would suggest that all political parties enjoy their share hypocrisy and each, in turn, lifts the others with it. I would also suggest that a good many of us are weary of it...especially when it is our own.
1
I recall an interview with then VP Dick Cheney where he was questioned about the growth of spending and deficits driven by the Dick&Bush Debacle in Iraq. He smiled and dismissed the issue by asserting that "Reagan showed us that deficits don't really matter".
Perhaps nothing in politics really matters because, as the economist, Maynard Keynes, when asked what he foresaw for the long term, replied,
"We're all dead".
4
I feel like Republicans do have a plan on how to cut deficit spending, but they can't run for election during the mid terms talking about what they are going to cut. Even if what they cut out of certain programs are wasteful things that everyone agreed should be cut, the headlines would be something vague that sounds bad for example "Republicans announce cuts for Social Security". Most people don't read beyond the headlines so this is going to make Republicans look bad.
In my opinion Republicans are waiting for the mid terms where their majority will most likely expand in one or both chambers of congress. Then they can get to work making cuts to wasteful things in different government funded programs and reducing the spending deficit.
The goal is collapse of government. It is not a hidden thing: it is called strangling the beast. The path is bankruptcy by design. At the current rate, under peak activity, the US deficit is $1T+/year. Under a recession/depression scenario, the political will be there, but there will be no money to borrow as no one will take anything other than junk bond rates. That's the plan and it may succeed. The only question is: to what future? Not a democratic one.
Perhaps this is premature to declare victory when Republican hypocrisy has been known for quite some times
"And if one of the Democrats’ brightest young stars isn’t overly concerned about basic budget math, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that much of the rest of the party will follow. Indeed, there is already a movement within liberal policy circles arguing that debt and deficits are far less important than most lawmakers have assumed."
AOC's imprecise answer on a comedic talk show means all Democrats will not work toward fiscal responsibility? This is a slippery slope syllogism that does not hold water.
Unfettered capitalism has created an ever widening gap between the ultra wealthy and the rest of the country and the world. It's a matter of priorities and efficiency in spending. Progressives prioritize health and wellbeing, a living wage, profit sharing, high quality, affordable education, and jobs.
The military industrial complex is a beast that needs constant feeding. We should definitely reduce spending on bombs and weaponry and devote more resources to diplomacy.
5
The federal government spends $4.5T per year and collects $3T per year in taxes. Why don’t we simply increase taxes on everyone - no exceptions - 50% and then enjoy the party? As our personal finances adjust to the increased tax hit over the next couple of years, we can then introduce single payer healthcare and college for all, and increase taxes a commensurate and compounded further 100% to pay for the additional goodies. Once every single working American is paying the requisite 70% tax rate, we will have our wonderful new world. What’s not to like?
2
Excellent articulation of how the differences between the Republican and Democratic parties, in effect, are marginal, although that might not have been a direct intent of the author.
They both love pork, and eat a lot of it. It's been both parties for the last 50+ years, at least.
Systems of taxation are necessary and definitely dampen economic growth. The more complicated and/or unfair they are, the bigger the dampening effect. Ask Venezuelans, among others. Our system of taxation is way over engineered and burdens all participants. And it doesn't sufficiently fund the government that people want.
I am no expert, but it smells like we need a radical change away from the stench of Republicans and Democrats.
No surprises here. The GOP has always carped about deficits, but once they get inside the store, they proceed to rob the till and spend like sailors. After awhile, Democrats are going to get tired of having to spend their turns in power trying to balance the books after GOP spending sprees instead of funding all the social initiatives they've promised their constituents.
Better to just dip their own hands in as well and then let the onus of passing austerity measures fall on the party of "fiscal responsibility."
All politicians feed the idea that you can get something for nothing, or that something that's prohibitively expensive (health care, college) may be made to be less expensive, if government assumes the costs. The opposite is true, as government helped make health care, college and the cost of procuring military supplies, comically expensive. "socialism" or social democratism can only take hold among people who take more from the public coffers than they contribute (students, abject poor, ). The numbers of these people have grown, but are finite. Also, many of their dream projects, like "Medicare for All" are so expensive, they are unattainable without enormous tax increases. Socialism is a dream that school children have until they start paying bills.
1
Then please explain why the US’ private, for-profit healthcare system is the most expensive in the world.
2
"One can perhaps imagine a Republican Party that could defend conventional notions of fiscal responsibility with some semblance of integrity, a conservative movement that governed according to its professed principles..." Why imagine it Republican? or conservative? Everyone in government not primarily interested in enriching themselves at the public's expense would care about fiscal responsibility. Integrity and public service are not conservative principles. Sadly, with the Republicans currently in power, this vision of government as public service exists only in our imagination.
1
You want budget math? Think outside the box. Impose an individual assets tax with a $2M deductible. Time to claw back the ridiculous accumulations of wealth in this country that started in the 1980s.
4
Mr Suderman, American politics are run by extreme ideology and/or in Trump's case, an ego maniac demagogue.
Your stance of libertarianism goes in that direction too, ie blind ideology.
What America needs know is a moderate progressive libertarian.
In the recent modern era, Obama came closest to it.
1
So Suderman thinks the following are bad:Free college education; a right to having a job; family leave; and, more. He's just a clown. Moreover, capitalism is rapacious.
3
I notice, Mr. Suderman, that you are "managing editor" at an outfit called Reason.com.
Do not forget how small a role "reason" plays in American political life.
I am struck--I'm sure you too are struck--by the mischief done by LABELS. You fix a LABEL on your opponent--and that opponent is branded for life. Crippled. Neutralized.
Think back to the 1850's--just before the Civil War. When Republicans--can you believe it?--were thought the champions of black people. So--to our friends in the south--they were BLACK REPUBLICANS.
Jump ahead sixty years. Just after World War I. When "socialist" meant--BOLSHEVIK. Or COMMUNIST. Or just plain RED.
And speak of the devil! Keep jumping on to the early 1950's. Senator McCarthy flinging about those very words. Listen (with your mind's ear) to that sinister, slightly nasal voice intoning the word, "COM. .MUNIST."
Oh so dreary. Michael Dukakis--gently but firmly put in his place by Mr. Bush Senior--"the LIBERAL governor of Massachusetts."
Today's Republicans, Mr. Suderman--they are to a T the budgetary hypocrites you say they are. Mr. Bush Junior--the first EVER (I believe) to lower taxes IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR.
But today's GOP is a PAST MASTER--at fixing opprobrious labels on people. I have scant hopes that well-meaning Democrats might turn the tables--ply their adversaries with the same tricks. Stick the socialist placard on THEM for a change.
Maybe they will. Maybe.
Here's hoping.
2
The author of this piece comes from reason.com, which is John Stossel's new podium. This is not respectable or responsible. It's like giving an op-ed to a libertarian fringe of Fox News. I don't get it.
1
Th Democrats have become the party of fiscal responsibility. Plain and simple.
Come over to the BlueSide 'Never Trumpers'.
You will find a home.
1
News for you, Mr. Suderman. All politicians are self-serving hypocrites!
1
Shame on the times for publishing such trash. The core truth here, the GOP are bad people who lie without shame, is muddied by a stupid and baseless argument based on the most tenuous of rhetorical threads.
Even the basic premises of the article are wrong. Debt and deficit are two very different things yet the they are carelessly lumped together here.
1
I have always been baffled, as to the obvious, that the average Democrat is several magnitudes of intelligence above the average Republican, yet manage to get their tails kicked, election after election. I guess the problem is, they are too damn lazy to get off the couch and take an hour out of their day once every two years, and go vote.
1
This is the New York Times, right? Do your editors actually edit? Democratic Socialism IS NOT THE SAME THING as Socialism. Literally the opening sentences of this piece make this mistake. The specious attacks on Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Socialism are also incorrect. Universal health care SAVES 2 trillion (calculated by a viciously right wing think tank - hmm, think the truth just might be even more positive than that?), but this article just brushes this off and claims her ideas are expensive and there’s no way to pay for them. In truth, she has proposed many common sense and legitimate ways to pay for them, including reduced military spending (USA spends more on military than the next 10 nations COMBINED and it is an ENORMOUS part of our budget. There is a TON of money to be saved there while still spending plenty on defense), and raising taxes on the wealthy (which are currently VERY LOW). If Democratic Socialist ideas are so expensive and pie in the sky, why are they the norm in SO MANY advanced Democratic nations? And finally, the central thesis of this opinion is utter BS. The right has been fully hypocritical about the deficit since the time of REAGAN - almost 40 friggin’ years ago. What’s driving the rise of Democratic Socialism is the fact that the corporatist Centrist Dems have moved so far to the right in the last few years that they are now right of Nixon. Not a joke and not hyperbole. Nixon proposed single payer with profits capped at 2%. Look it up.
4
Free tuition is not free college. I spend far more on expenses than tuition.
Also Ocasio is not the Democratic star you are presenting her as. She rejects a lot of conservative bullshit which makes her wise, but she's not knowledgable about specific policy. But that's fine because you can write incredibly poor socialistic legislation (not that I'm suggesting they would) and it'll work far better than the best conservative legislation because it's not based on false premises like meritocracy and god.
1
Mr. Suderman must be a young pup. An astoundingly cynical approach to deficits and debt has been the right-wing calling card since at least the 80's (it is nothing new). And yet the Left still has no coherent message to take advantage. They can't even muster the courage to speak cogently and effectively in support of restoring higher marginal tax rates, or of lifting the salary cap on social security withholding. Wallowing in ineffectiveness has been the Left's calling card; I wish I could see it changing.
Mr. Suderman seems to think "socialism" means we exercise no budgetary common sense.
We could not do worse on federal budgeting than these "capitalist" Republicans have done.
He can't imagine how we could make the transition to single-payer, so he is dismissive. Fortunately there are reality-grounded people - Bernie Sanders is one - who have strong ideas about how to get there from here. We make 12 BILLION bullets in the US each year. Enough to kill every human on earth at least 2 x. Let's start by trimming back on that insanity. https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2012-05-30/ammunition-t...
The hypocrisy of the Republicans in the area of budget restraint has been on display since the days of the cold war. There was no amount of money that was too much for the GOP to spend on the military and national defense. The GOP under Trump, gave more money to the military that the military request, demonstrating nothing has changed for the party.
The GOP can spend as easily as the Democrats. What the American people have to decide is what they want that money to be spent on now. The social democrats are taking a stand; demanding it be spent on Americans, in healthcare, education and safety net protections. It is gaining traction because more and more members of the younger generations understand the diminishing returns of deficit spending on ever increasing military budgets and tax cuts aimed at only the top 1% of our citizens.
As more younger people come into the voting ranks, the GOP's hypocrisy paired with their inane arguments will lose the argument. When that day comes, the GOP will have no national leverage; only pockets of regional disgruntlement and wonder as to what went so terribly wrong with their ideology.
Yes, Republican leaders are hypocritical, but perhaps not as much as suggested in the article. Many of them may see the big budget deficits as part of a long-term strategy of "starving the beast." If interest rates ever rise, Congress will come under intense pressure to reduce deficits in a hurry. Republicans will offer a trade: the end of these new tax cuts for deep reductions in governmental services. These are reductions they can't get in normal times, but may be politically feasible in a true budgetary crisis.
We need a new framework. The language we use increasingly limits our ability to successfully grapple with these issues, as this piece and many others along these lines illustrate. For one thing, every time a politician takes a stand on an issue, it should be understood by all, including the one standing, that it is a starting point. Perceptive flexibility, a term l just made up, would create a political climate where real positions are debated and modulated. Language used by Bernie Sanders both enabled and inhibited this process. Enabled by presenting a new and potentially viable approach to social issues, and inhibited by presenting them as inviolate. It needs to be re oganized that the real work should be done in congress. That takes a leap of faith in both the process and some measure of good will and intentions of elected officials no matter where they stand. We are not there. Social scientists, public affairs specialists and economist need to do the detail work. Presenting social reform as a set of constructs out of context makes us all stupid and functionally socieconomic and political illiterates.
Republicans cause big deficits primarily from lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations, subsidizing profit-making corporations and starting unnecessary wars. Wouldn't it be better to have a deficit because the average American is being helped with their everyday life? A single-payer health system wouldn't necessarily raise the deficit anyway. A 2 or 3% raise in taxes would be enough to cover it and would be a lot less money than what people are paying in premiums to insurance companies with high deductibles and fighting to get care. Many deductibles are so high that people will never meet them unless they have a catastrophic illness. Why can't people think for themselves and quit allowing themselves to be brainwashed into thinking that universal healthcare would be more expensive than the non-system we have? Logic seems to be an unknown concept in this country.
In the 21st century Republicans have yet to demonstrate any ability to govern. However, they have clearly indicated a burning desire to rule.
2
And Reason Magazine will continue to support this hypocrisy as long as there is a chance that it wil help to stop social spending or cut back on social insurance.
1
"That Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of expansive, expensive socialism has found this moment so conducive to its popularity is no accident." Ms. Ocasio-Cortez garnered just under 16,000 votes in a Bronx district in June primary when Democratic voter turnout was barely over 10%. Extrapolating this truly tiny sample to some kind of national trend is beyond reason. Further, the intro sentence to this oped inferring that Republicans running up the debt is akin to socialism of a sort, while true, was presented like an insight rather the fairly obvious situation it is. Overblown insights and false premises nullify of good reasoning or so I thought. It seems to me that journalism and oped editorials are more and more drifting towards propaganda than reasonableness. On this I would blame the Republicans, Fox News, etc. but for progressives to embrace this as some kind of fighting fire with fire is a sign of weakness. Truth, fact, reason - these are the pillars of strength that our politics desperately need - from anybody in any party.
"...Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of expansive, expensive socialism..." Expensive for whom? Not for the taxpayer, who will save hundreds to hundreds of thousands of dollars if they're un/underinsured. Not for the employer, who won't have to foot the bill anymore. Expensive for the Republicans though, because big insurance won't be there to pour money into their coffers...
1
Our most serious long term problem is Corporate Socialism which is never addressed by Republicans and little mention of it by Democrats.
3
"But although Republicans will surely attack the new class of Democratic Socialists and their policies as debt-increasing budget busters — that is, after all, what Republicans do — their own actions will ensure that those criticisms have no real authority."
The writer makes some excellent points, however the idea that their criticisms will have no real authority remains questionable to me. Most Republicans, that I know, don't read a national newspaper and get their information from Fox and social media. So the average Republican will never know the hypocrisy of their leadership as they flip flop on the issue of deficits and spending. Already some people on the right are spinning the rumor that the wild fires in California as being started by Muslims. We need to confront and stop this dangerous misinformation and find a common source of news.
1
I always enjoy this comment: "Republicans cast Mr. Obama’s rising deficits . . ." Obama inherited a trillian dollar deficit and it continually came down during his tenure and would have done so more if congressional Republican's had been willing to compromise on budget bills. The author does seem to acknowledge later in the article, albeint grudgingly, that deficits came down under Obama. He also doesn't acknowledge that deficits in an economic crisis are good -- they help stimulate the economy. In a strong economy (and I'm not sure we're there yet given wage stagnation and low labor participation rates) they can be inflationary. All the GOP tax cut did is open the federal treasury and shovel money into the pockets of the wealthiest Americans. Kinda socialism for the rich.
6
Great points but I think the writer missed an important aspect of the Republicans dogma. By pushing their raw tooth and claw version of capitalism that slants power to the asset owning class they are debunking the underlying value of our mixed capitalist/market system in the eyes of our younger generations.
The version of capitalism pushed by the Republicans is not the one proposed by Adam Smith or the one that built this country into the most productive economy in history. They recognized that the government needs to establish rules for the open markets to operate in so they can benefit the society as a whole. You can't have a "free market" without underlying rules of the road for all the participants.
The current version of Republican Capitalism based on unrestrained individualism without regard to how actions impact the overall society in the belief that it will somehow work out for everyone is an illusion and a self serving lie pushed by the right wing asset owning class.
Unless they look into the history a little more deeply, our younger generations reject the version of capitalism presented by the Repulicans as deeply flawed, and as a matter of course, turn to Socialism as an answer. So the current bankrupt Republican agenda ultimately leads to the exact opposite of the old Republican principles.
3
Social democracy is hardly new, and some Republicans practiced it. Presidents like Eisenhower and Nixon actually expanded parts of Social Security and Medicare (respectively—Medicare wasn't around during Eisenhower's term). So let's not think that Bernie Sanders somehow invented this stuff—Harry Truman stumped for national health care, and lost.
The problem for widespread adoption of "democratic socialism" is that registered Democrats will go for it, by and large. But those aren't the voters the party needs to win back control of Congress. Democrats need to win independent votes, especially in the suburbs. Those folks work, and they receive their health care as part of their compensation until they retire (and some of them receive supplemental after we retire, but that's becoming rare).
That's why I call the platform of "democratic socialism" (universal government health care; free tuition for all, and so forth) pie-in-the-sky politics: the majority of voters just won't go for it, and independents surely won't. Democrats should concentrate on three issues: the jobs lost by Trump's tariffs, a federal deficit that's going to make interest rates rise to the sky and increase inflation, the shoring up of the social security we now have (the retirement fund, Medicare). Sorry to be practical, but I want Democrats to win, not spin wonderful fables that lose.
1
@Wilton: Don't be so sure that working families in the suburbs are pleased with their health insurance. I know plenty of them, and none of them are happy with their situations. Employers keep pushing the increasing costs of health insurance onto their employees. That keep wages depressed, because employers can pretend that these policies are like cash benefits. Working families are being asked to pay more and more of their stagnant wages toward insurance, or else lose their insurance altogether. Additionally, deductibles are so high in some cases that people can't even use the insurance they have. If you have a thousand dollar deductible for each member of a family of four, that's a minimum of four thousand more dollars out of pocket, on top of increased premium payments, as well as increased co-pays for every visit to a doctor. Add that to the fact that insurance companies are once again going to be allowed to discriminate against pre-existing conditions, and you are asking for a major revolt against the insurance system we currently have. Even among well-off suburbanites.
2
A medicare for all system would be cheaper than our current private system. How to finance it-taxes and people would still pay less. Of course we wouldn't have insurance and healthcare executives making tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.
3
I love how so much time and energy is spent fretting about social-democratic ideas as if there is any real potential for them to ever be realized. There is a huge right wing media machine out there that would destroy it even better than they destroyed Obamacare which was a right wing plan in the first place. But raise the specter once again - the horrors of universal health coverage and free college education (We can't afford that!).
But here is the thing about social-democratic ideas that the right wing obscures so well - they are founded on the desire to directly help people in their lives. We are lost in the idea that has been sold to us that a government is there to help markets which in turn will help businesses which in turn will help employees who in turn will help their families. A trickle down approach which we can see has worked so well with the income distribution the way it is.
There is enough wealth/ prosperity/ goodwill/ generosity in this country that if we wanted and made it a priority in our lives that everyone that wanted could have a job, that everyone could be well educated, that everyone could be fed, clothed, and housed, that everyone could have healthcare. If that was the goal this country could figure out a way to achieve that. But let's just say this is impossible and that this is just crazy talk by some bleeding heart liberal snowflake.
4
Labels obscure political designs, so we need to look at the fact that radicals with little respect for our republican government have taken over the Republican Party instead of calling public education, roads, utilities, water, health care and medical research socialist. Trump brazenly exposes Republican admiration for a strong executive that tends toward monarchy and strip states of their traditional mission as laboratories of democracy. Trump, with Republican aquiescence, is trying to stretch their position with unilateral proposals to cut capital gains taxes without consent of Congress. He and his Republican sycophants in Congress want to impose federal environmental standards that states like California cannot exceed, returning us to the days when LA smog were I grew up was so it looked like amber fog. They hope to stack the judiciary with like minded individuals who have equal disdain for our American experience and impose federal control on states that would probably have appalled Alexander Hamilton, a champion of federal government. Devin Nunes, who represents a district just south of me, is part of Trump's sycophants who disdain republican government as you'll hear on his commercial to repeal our new gas tax saying with the bizarre assumption the legislature has no right to increase taxes without a vote of the people, a position that will drive my state that helps drive the U.S. economy into anarchy. Conservatives have always tried to suppress the right to vote, so do
1
David Stockman admitted that this was Republican strategy back in the 1980s. What's amazing is that it is still considered news to point it out. But what's missing in this article is the real target of Republican deficit hawkishness: the strategy is to use huge debts and deficits as a rationale for cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
3
The 2 underlying reasons that Trump / Republican Congress is running up the deficit to unsustainable levels are both elements of a shakedown:
(1) They are redistributing wealth via Federal / Congressional action to the very wealthy. The $100 billion capital gains tax giveaway is a perfect example — sold as a way to stimulate job growth. The real reason is to create an oligarchy that can rule this country, irrespective of elections. The red states’ governance will increasingly resemble the Anglo-Saxon principalities of proto-England during early 9th Century, thanks to ALEC.
(2) They are intent on “running the economy off the road” again, in order to neuter the Federal Government’s fiscal power. In a 2010 City Club of Cleveland speech, Obama called out Rebublicans: “Do we return to the same failed policies that ran our economy into a ditch, or do we keep moving forward with policies that are slowly pulling us out?” Now the Republicans don’t only want to run the economy into a ditch, but off a cliff, where, after a default, Federal fiscal priorities can be completely restructured to their priorities: defense, law enforcement, and light infrastructure (mostly private). Healthcare will have to be privatized since the Federal Government has been beggared.
I don’t know why this dynamic is not discussed more often. The Republicans are often passed off as feckless when they are truly Machiavellian in their efforts. They want to make the US in their own authoritarian image.
3
As an addendum— I don’t understand why Peter Suderman, being a libertarian by nature and opposed to government-based health care, doesn’t celebrate the current attempt to bankrupt the Federal Government in order to knock it out of providing it. Why is he calling the Republicans hypocrites when they will be implementing what he wants?
2
It is amazing how thoroughly right-wing propaganda has warped minds. Leaving aside the reality-denialism of the Republican base that made and makes the decades-long charade Mr. Suderman describes possible, consider Mr. Suderman's own phrasing here.
"[E]ven Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has not entirely given up the pretense of caring about deficits."
A more accurate way to write this is "Like virtually all Democrats, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez genuinely cares about deficits, among other priorities, and proposes a combination of targeted spending cuts and revenue raises to pay for her favored policies."
There's no "pretense of caring." She, and Democrats, actually do. There's no "partially giving up" on caring about deficits to make "not entirely giving up" a meaningful phrase; she's not walking away from some higher standard of fiscal responsibility, because she's in the mainstream of the party on deficits and the Republican Party, the only meaningful alternative, doesn't care about deficits at all. Which the author is clearly aware of, since it's a premise of this piece.
"Although Mr. Obama presided over some of the nation's highest deficits..." followed by absolutely no mention of the Republican role in creating the situation that necessitated that spending. It's like blaming Lincoln for "years with the highest mortality rates for working-age American men in American history."
It is no surprise that Reason, the magazine, continues to be a running joke: to wit, a tired pun on its own name.
1
It is time for the Corpra Dems to wake up and smell the coffee. The Rrs (Russian republicans) have been playing Good Santa - Bad Santa with the 3Way Ds as the Santa Grinch for years as years. Governments are not the same as "families". The product of government "should" be services that are needed and outside the abilities if the family unit.
For example, if the trillions of dollars that were given to bail out Wall Street in 2009, had instead been given to those who were underwater in their mortgage, the banks would have gotten their money AND the great housing catastrophe would not have happened.
Comrade, I take exception to your "assumptions" about deficits, debt, socialism and I guess the rest of your tirade. Deficits that create better conditions for most are not always bad. The deficit spending that created the motivation for our economies growth is not bad. As an example, the recent tax cuts - especially for business, created an economic lift that repays this deficit spending. The over $10 Trillion spent by the Obama Administration did nothing but double our deficit. This money wow, in essence burnt and forgotten to all but those that will be responsible for its pay back in the future. It has been proven that money "given" away to others, only builds future dependence by those "others". I will agree that all politicians are hypocrites. Prime example is a person like Senator Schumer. He stood in front of Congress preaching the benefit and need for immigration reform and closed borders during the Obama Administration only to do a 180 on this when a Republican President made this a keystone of his platform. Peter, isn't it about time that the NYT's bring itself back to the middle and stop fanning the flames of socialism and negativity?
1
"Think tanks from across the political spectrum estimate a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system, the challenge would be to finance the enormous increase in government spending on health care."
OK, once again the NYT is gaslighting you. How can we afford the current MORE EXPENSIVE system but not a system that by EVERY measurement is in fact CHEAPER.
It doesn't matter if it is 17 trillion dollars cheaper (which was the estimate produced in 2016). or $17.58 cheaper.....cheaper is cheaper and is inherently more affordable.
Remember: no one with any power in America will ever ask you how we are going to afford endless military spending. Never. They will only concern themselves with finances when it means helping out normal, everyday people and their families. We always have money for bombs....
2
Fiscal irresponsibility is a core American value along with oppression of the poor, coddling of the rich, keeping the masses ignorant and glorifying war. Republicans embrace these core values and therefor, in spite of their time proven ineptitude at governance, remain a powerful force.
Almost no Republican or modern Conservative policy is popular with ordinary Americans yet, ordinary Americans know, in their hearts that Republicans can be relied upon, no matter what they say, to further the above core values.
No one cares about deficits - no one.
2
Republicans for decades have used two issues as their cudgels--deficits and abortion--and they care not a whit about either. The last thing in the world they want is to shrink the debt or to overturn Roe v. Wade. Then what would they run on? Principles, values, honor, dignity, peace, diplomacy, intelligent positions? All are losers for the party because, should Republicans, especially Republican leaders, take on ordinary human qualities, they could no longer use racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and cruelty to bring out their rabid base.
This piece should be memorized by anyone who is engaged in a debate about public policy, and then applied in practice to all discussions.
1
This isn't new. Republicans have always been fiscally irresponsible going back to at least Reagan. This didn't start with Obama. Trump has governed as a conventional republican the only difference is hes an overt instead of covert racist.
2
Each political party shows it best face when out of office. In office, it’s just a different crop of plutocrats looting the public. They only way to minimize the looting is minimize government, or at least keep it local so the looters have to see you at the grocery store and fear your hands around their neck.
1
That's what Republicans want you to believe - and you've bought it, hook, line, & sinker.
3
Conservatives like Suderman can't control their berzerk at the rise of a Puerto Rican socialist girl from the Bronx. Give me a break. She's an inspiring young voice but she's not even a freshman legislator yet, representing one of the most left-wing districts in the country. They're making a bogeyman out of her as if she were Obama or someone with real power in the party. Their derangement at the half-Kenyan moderate liberal president supported twice by the majority of Americans was one thing. Their pedestaling and degradation of a 27-year-old dark-skinned up-and-comer from an obscure corner of New York who hasn't figured everything out is something else. Dog whistle meet wolf whistle.
1
Revisionist history.
Bernie Sanders was the ABC Presidential candidate of 2016. ABC? Anyone But Clinton. Sanders won 22 states, and nearly captured the nomination if not for a corrupt DNC.
1
Sorry. Sanders lost the popular vote to Clinton by a greater margin than Trump did.
Yes all ready, we know the "Republicans" are liars. But how does that help the Democrats win? Republicans have exploded the deficit with tax cuts to the wealthy. No money left for single payer medical insurance. Isn't it obvious why they did this?
It seems that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez may be that ray of sunshine that appears after the tornado (tornado Trump) has leveled your community. Time to start rebuilding...
4
There is no hope that explanations or facts will influence the followers of Trump. Not until the propaganda arm of the right is dismantled and Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc are forced to refuse dissemination of disinformation, slander, and fake “ news”. With the bonkers billionaire controlled GOP Congress, that ain’t gonna happen.
Bush's deficits gave us useless wars and devastation. Tax cuts for the rich, death, and hijacked government. When are the people gong to rise up?
3
Proudly socialist! Let's join the developed world: health care, education/training for meaningful work, family leave, women's rights, decent pay, retirement....sounds good to me.
3
@Pat
Don't forget mandatory paid annual leave - say 40 days (vacation & holidays) like in Germany.
The Republican party is/was made up of three wings. The evangelicals, the business wing and the white nationalists. They have been growing further and further apart and have been permanently separated by Trump's policies.
The democrats should pick up the folks from the business wing who believe in global free trade and promoting democracy around the world and leave the evangelicals and white nationalists to the Republicans.
1
Love this! The Reaganesque repeal of Glass-Steagal was BIPARTISAN as was the green light for the totalitarian "Global War on Terror." Both are total failures and both are why the Dems are doomed and the GOP "fascist" and holding the reins of our 3 Federal branches.
And Mr. Suderman fears the Democratic Socialists will do something positive to restore what the Centrists have destroyed. Oh the horror ... that his little DC insider's reality will get what it deserves. Divine Comedy.
1
Republican and hypocrite are synonymous. For example:
- Deficits are bad and destructive.
- Presidents who lie should be impeached.
- Political leaders must have high moral values and be practicing Christians.
- You must honor every veteran (except those who were captured or criticize you).
- Our presidents must be veterans with honorable military service (except for the one who went AWOL and the draft dodger).
2
Hypocrisy is a moral judgment that exposes standing for a principle and then doing the opposite. Trump has neutralized the fact-based analysis necessary for anyone to make that judgment by contesting every fact as “fake news” and creating his own “facts” out of whole cloth (Obama was born in Kenya, US Muslims were dancing in the streets after 9/11, he polled higher in popularity than Lincoln).
His supporters care for nothing other than venting their anger by trolling liberals, Democrats and journalists, thereby satisfying a sense of empowerment through an unwavering fawning worship of their President.
And the Republicans like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have gone too far to turn back now, as the GOP has a 90% approval rating.
Does the author of this article expect them to reclaim their former fervor as deficit hawks after having abandoned their characterization of Trump as a “pathological liar” and a “con man”? They have encouraged their constituencies to vote a pathological liar and con man into the highest office in the land.
So for whom is this article written?
Peter Suderman probably has no more understanding of macro economics, public debt, and the money system than I or the average “educated” adult. But in the way he discusses public spending, deficits, and debt, it is clear he is only regrettting the consequences of Republican ignorance and hypocracy. The way he frames his argument makes it likely that he is worried more about threats to the privileges of irresponsibly owned private concentrated wealth than he cares about democracy or the dignity of struggling Americans.
But the drive for a Green New Deal, a massive overhaul of our energy and transportation infrastructures associated with a transformation of our healthcare and education systems is driven by human need as well as by national security and world peace.
The primary opening for socialism is not a result of Republican hypocracy. It’s a result of their policies which since the 70s have successfully commandeered wealth from ordinary Americans into the hands of a rapacious idiot (0.1%) elite which irresponsibly refuses to invest their treasure in productive industry.
Democrats like Cortez would love to boot me off Medicare which I payed into my entire working life, so I can wait in line to see a doctor behind illegal immigrants who never paid a dime. And then raise my taxes to pay for it. No thanks.
2
Wake up Democrats, the debt is an issue you need to take on. It is a problem and cutting taxes for the rich is part of it. Republicans are destroying the world for our children....both enviornmrentally and economically. Add spiritually to that one. They’re the party of the selfish child.
>
Maybe, but 40% of the American population is a bunch of deplorables, full stop. DJT makes proof unnecessary. Then there is another 8% that are borderline, and will always give the rightwing candidate the benefit of the doubt, which is exactly why our elections are so close.
Then you have 5% of left leaning people that just can't seem to figure out how the chess game of politics is played and vote for these never will win candidates Stein, Nader, Sanders.... Each time the left has paid the priced, and it is high.
A plethora of social science shows 1 in 4 humans are inclined to the autocratic strongman. I think this is a bit optimistic. And God help us should scarcity of resources, food, energy etc.....enter onto the stage. Then it's down to Dante's last ring.
Elections are simply a roll call, a measuring stick for summing up the current state of deplorables.
“Monuments to human misery and wickedness are found everywhere—prisons, hospitals, gallows, and beggars. Here you see the ruins of a flourishing city; in other places you cannot even find the ruins.”
Bayle
1
All I can say is that this sort of Republican hypocrisy is not new. As Dick Cheney memorably put it, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." The GOP seems to care about deficits only when Congress or the President proposes spending $$$ on social programs.
In fact, to call Republican policy hypocrisy understates the party's mendacity. The GOP is happy to have a large deficit, because it can point to the deficit as the reason that the U.S. cannot afford social spending.
1
When it comes to how republican politicians (from Trump down to the local dog catcher) view the American electorate, it's wise to remember the maxim of one PT Barnum:
There's a sucker born every minute.
Barnum was right.
4
If you do the math, you'll see that Barnum's estimate was light. There are 525,600 minutes in a year. Trump received almost 63 million votes.
At one sucker per minute it would take almost 120 years to populate the sucker rolls. I'd say the real number is more like 3 suckers born every minute.
1
The foolish response to 'how would you pay for your spending proposals' is to say you want to increase taxes - to make someone pay for it. The republican approach, which is a clear winner, is to say NOBODY needs to pay for it. Why should progressives pay for their agenda. The conservatives believe NOBODY needs to pay for tax cuts or their huge military expenses. Why be responsible? NOBODY cares or votes on that.
Until the social democrats jump on the Jesus bandwagon, they stand very little chance of winning over any Republicans.
1
@Deutschmann
You could argue that Jesus was indeed a socialist.
1
In all other advanced nations the American Social Democrats would be considered to be slightly left of the political spectrum.
The not-so-gentle right and arch-right voters considers them as being almost commie pure.
4
So let me get this straight: The Left is now blaming the rise of socialism on Republicans?
4
Why does the title say "social democrats" when the article is about democratic socialism? These are two completely different ideologies and it's a shame no one seems to recognize that. Social democracy simply calls for an expansion of social programs within a capitalist framework, which democratic socialism is an actual form of socialism. It's important to understand the difference, and to realize that countries such as Sweden which are social democratic are NOT socialist.
1
The author derides "Medicare for all" as socialism - and it is. But what, then, is his term for when only the wealthy can afford private insurance and/or out-of-pocket medical care and society is forced to pick up the tab for everyone else?
Frankly, I much prefer the intellectual honesty of tax-and-spend liberals over pretend-nothing-ever-needs-to-be-paid-for pseudoconservatives, any day.
74
@BKLYNJ Wrong, Medicare for all is not socialism.
1
If the Republicans can't do math and consistently overspend why should anyone else be held to higher standard? After all, they are the party in power.
Almost every Republican president left us with a recession or even a depression. Every Democratic president fixed the problem. As Harry Truman said, "If you want to live like a Republican you need to vote Democratic."
2
So some Democrats have begun to disallow the Republicans to define the debate. Good on them, I say.
"Reagan proved deficits don't matter" - Dick Cheney
Paul Ryan and President Trump certainly went to school on this one. Why preside over an austerity program that would infuriate the masses when you can create the illusion of prosperity with endless $trillion deficits?
The big question is, at some point, WILL deficits matter? And will the US be the major casualty or the only place to hide? Worldwide debt just hit $247 Trillion, 318% of GDP, much of it in sovereign dollar-denominated debt.
If history is any guide, massive credit expansions often result in bubbles that implode.
2
Yes of course, the moment they're out of power the Republicans' inevitable denunciation of social spending as fiscally irresponsible will be hollow. They'll do it anyway, with straight somber faces and all the false gravitas they can muster. And they'll likely, and astoundingly, convince enough people to be taken seriously. That's Paul Ryan's entire career in a nutshell.
The GOP intends to roll the calendar back to those sunny days of the first year of the Hoover administration after 2 terms of Calvin Coolidge. They never forgave FDR for the New Deal and have been trying to obliterate it since.
The recent GOP scheme is simple. Impoverish the working class, destroy labor unions and refuse collective bargaining. Tax the middle and working classes and transfer as much of the GDP to the .1% as possible while keeping wages stagnant. Run up a huge deficit and use it to give a huge tax cut to the rich. Then impoverish the Treasure so there is no money left for anything that the rich do not need or want. Voila, fascist, economic feudalism.
What is it the Democrats need? Another FDR and hopefully she will be what the Democrats have always stood for. We need to flip the beneficiaries of government from the .1% to the 99%, starting with a New Deal reboot and a top tax bracket of 90% and Medicare for all or what Canada has. People over corporations.
1
The Republican slur that Democrats are "tax and spend liberals" has been firmly entrenched in our politics for decades. It's time for an equally catchy punch back. How about "borrow and spend conservatives."
Borrowing money is actually more expensive when interest costs are added. Just ask anyone who has ever bought a house or a car or financed purchases on a credit card. There's nothing conservative about it.
Republicans will still attack Democrats on the deficit and the national debt for one simple reason: they have no shame. They will continue to paint Democrats as “tax and spend liberals” while focusing on the fact that they cut taxes and gave money back to the American people. Conveniently, they’ll leave out the fact that those tax cuts primarily benefited millionaires and billionaires while blowing up the national debt in the process. Democrats’ only hope is to point out how this “tax cut”, and how Republican fiscal policy in general, is really just another front in the class war the rich have declared on the American middle class.
If Trump is so eager for the Europeans to pay their fair share of NATO defense costs (and they should) then where's the justification for the increase in the military budget, as he has done?
We could pay for so much if we just reduced our bloated military. Pleased to hear Ocasio-Cortez mention that.
2
Terrific piece. Thanks!
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has pointed out that Medicare for All is not a budget buster. More importantly she has also pointed out that it is basic human decency to provide healthcare for every person in the richest country that has ever existed.
Hyping the debt and deficit issue has become a partisan issue. It is always a pot calling the kettle black.
When a democrat is in the white house, the Republicans say too much spending. President Obama, a democrat accumulated more debt than all the previous presidents combined.
When a Republican does the over sending like Reagan did on the military, the democrats point to accumulating greater debt than all the presidents combined before him.
Now that Trump administration gave tax cuts across the board to none other than the tax payers, it is called Republican hypocrisy because both rich and poor will benefit. but the rich benefiting more.
As an independent I consider both the democrats and Republicans as hypocrites. The G.O.P is expanding their party too by opening the door wide open to the traditional democratic vote bank like the working class, the farmers, the African Americans, the Hispanics, Asians and women.
African American pastors are opening the eyes of African Americans and seeing Trump as bringing new hope.
"So, I guess the greatest word I can say for you, Mr. President, is that you have given this country expectations, given us a new hope, a new excitement to believe that things are getting better and are going to get better. “And we appreciate that leadership, your tenacity to keep pushing in against all the opposition that comes against you. Thank you so much.”
- Pastor Phillip Goudeaux this week in the white house.
1
There is already socialism in America, Corporate Socialism. This is also a welfare state, Corporate Welfare. A graph of the size of the deficit under Democratic Administrations and Republican Administrations shows all that needs to be shown about what hypocrites the Republicans are about the federal deficit. Slashing defense spending has nothing to do with defending America. It only hurts the military-industrial complex whose campaign contributions are what drives defense appropriations mainly granted by the Republicans. Trump's deficit debacle will cripple our country if it is not reined in. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's proposals could bring relief to middle and lower class Americans and eventually reduce the federal deficit. Give more money to those who need it by reducing the true tax burden on them and they will spend it increasing monetary velocity which will truly lift all boats. Eliminate corporate Socialism and replace it with Democratic Socialism and bring back America to all Americans.
1
America's private healthcare system is just too darn expensive. Americans are waking up to the fact that other advanced democracies all have public healthcare systems that provide good care to all and don't leave people vulnerable to losing coverage or going bankrupt when they are ill and fall on hard times. When the Republicans call those highly desirable universal health care programs "socialism" they make socialism look good. Republican hypocrisy on the deficit combined with their use of the word "socialism" to describe highly desirable policies of countries that are still democratic and capitalistic is making socialism look awfully attractive to the millions of Americans who fear they may be left without healthcare and driven to financial ruin if they are injured or ill.
1
If Democrats can retake the Congress and the executive in 2020, they could overturn Citizen's United and the Trump tax cuts. Then there would be money for healthcare for Americans. If there was even good basic health care for all, the economy could open up in new ways and bring in revenue from more people. Salaries might rise, because workers wouldn't have to stay for healthcare or go without. The Democrats have many objectives to help Americans. Trump has won the propaganda war, and has lived up to his promise to both help himself and his cronies, and regularly throws his base the racist red meat they adore that actually does nothing for them economically. What does "building a wall" actually do financially for farmers or others? What does "fake news", "lock her up", "Make America Great", "wear my hat" or other Trump slogans actually do to improve wages, create jobs that support families, help pay for college or daycare, keep us safe from crazies with guns, improve infrastructure, reform the immigration system, improve public schools, protect and clean up the environment, or do anything that helps American citizens? The Republican Party might as well be working for Putin for all the good they're doing for citizens. What will the majority, the non-wealthy, get for the trillion plus deficit they've bequeathed us and our children? Will any of the wealthy leave us public libraries like Carnegie? Health care for all? Not on your life.
1
So very grateful for the comments in the NYTs.Yes,there are people like me.We all need to vote this November.Our kid's futures depend on it.Will the DNC clean up, and once again support the agenda of FDR?We can only hope.
1
‘Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has embraced free public college, a jobs guarantee, guaranteed family leave and more’
My main problem with this lady is how far disconnected she is from reality. IN fact, this is why she is popular with the left fringe.
How does she plan to give free college for all? some one has to pay for that. We New Yorkers already pay 3 or 4 taxes: NY city, NY state, Federal and New Jersey of you live in NJ and work in the city. If she is planning to tax us to give to her friends she is out in left field if she thinks we will go for that.
A job guarantee. So what is that really? As an employer am I supposed to hire any one who walks in the door? How? Can some one tell me how can I budget for an endless number of staff with the same company income? Is she going to pay me to hire them so I can pay them? Who will pay for all that? I have a pay roll budget, I cannot accept every one into my payroll, we do not have the money for that.
Guaranteed family leave. It really means new employees will get pregnant and disappear on vacation while the rest of us stay back covering for them. And once back, they usually quit and claim unemployment.
And more? Oh boy. I can’t wait to hear how she plans on milking the tax payer for every last dollar to give for free to any one who votes for her.
3
@Said Ordaz On the question of "how does she plan to give free college to all?", you miss two things: 1) IT's free for public schools only, 2) it's free for only the kids who get into those public schools. Even so, did you ever ask: How did we just pay for a trillion dollar tax cut? How did we pay for a $700 billion dollar increase in military spending? How will Trump pay for the $12B he wants to give farmers? (Borrow it from China?). You, and most others, are positioned on the premise that what we spend right now is a given, and we must keep spending on those things, and that the money it takes to fund these new programs would be in addition to what we currently spend. Please try thinking outside the box. We don't have to spend money on the things we currently spend it on. AOC's not disconnected from reality...she's painting on a much bigger canvas than the little tiny corner her critics have trapped themselves within. Step out of your restricted box and see that the whole picture could be a lot different.
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@Said Ordaz not sure how old you are... but I am not THAT old - and my college education was cheap enough that I could afford tuition on a part time job and a pell grant. My brother got 2 masters degrees on the GI bill. It isn’t that hard and it’s not that expensive. College education has shot sky high not because schools are investing more in education- but because they are investing in such things as real estate etc- using tuition funds to churn cash to return to their ceo’s and other ‘shareholders’ (while education has become a secondary concern).
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I other words, you prefer the Republican brand of corporate welfare in the form of our current vast redistribution of wealth to the wealthy.
4
Republicans are so inebriated with power. After they make all these cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs for the poor, they will be embraced as saviors of our nation? They are not seeing down the road very far. For it clearly looks like the income gap will widen further under their watch. Which means more and more people who, while "gainfully" employed, will not be able to make ends meet on the wages they earn. They have been promised that significant income increases will be forthcoming. Not happening. But what is certain is the fiscal policies will have to be adjusted to account for the rising deficits resulting in higher interest rates and inflation. Whatever small gains workers do receive will be gobbled up not by necessities but by the increase in prices. And, let's remember, the federal grants to the states will be lower as well. People will lose health care. They will be even less able to afford child care, retirement, food for their families, rent, and so on. And infrastructure will deteriorate further. Do the Republicans think the American people, more and more of whom will be losers rather than winners under their policies, will just accept their fate and not vote for someone who promises to help them? Lets face it. The Republican standard of living is this: Be born. Live worse off than your parents. Go to school. Be unable to afford college. Work until you die. With minimal government support. Antidote? VOTE.
Branding their political movement as socialist, because it is to the left of the Democratic Party mainstream is maybe the poorest tactical move that Bernie Sanders and others have made. It’s oil on the fires of the right as well as on those of the mainstream pundits who write op eds. In any other country, a “Social Democrat” Party is the norm. In the US the term “socialist” in the name of a political party scares the wits out of middle-of-the-road democrats and has the right-wing lovers of “individual freedom” reaching for their semi-automatics. So it’s good to see the more appropriate “Social Democrats” in at least the heading of this piece.
As for the content: free college education is not as “blue-sky” as the author writes. It was not very long ago that most state universities in the US charged minimal fees that covered only their administrative costs. And CUNY tuition was $0 until the mid-1970s. Furthermore, guaranteed family leave in one form or the other is the norm in all OECD countries except the US (http://www.oecd.org/els/family/database.htm).
Pessimists may scorn Ms. Ocasio-Cortez for reaching for the sky, and right-wingers may despise her, but what the author calls “overreach” is common sense.
As they have done so many times before, The GOP and their corporate sponsors have pushed their agenda too far. Younger, more leftist politicians breathe life into the dead agenda of the corporate democrats. Unfortunately, cleaning up the fiscal mess will require disciplined monetary policies that are politically unpopular. The next responsible leadership's work will be largely janitorial, like Obama's and FDR's administrations were.
The Republicans have activated a base, but its not theirs.
The new base is comprised of those checking their inactive pasts at the door. It's filled with first time and not for a long time voters. It's overflowing with those so disgusted by the GOP's "Let them eat cake!" nonsense.
This base is larger than the GOP's base by a hundred fold, and it is sick and tired of Trump.
The GOP can keep telling the rest of us about the powerful Trump base they seem to fear as it erodes by the minute. Thanks to his own inane actions, Trump's base is strong. Thankfully, his deplorable behavior has also active a significantly larger group of voters who simply can't stand him.
We have reached a tipping point as a nation. We've never been a nation that needed to do harm the other guy in order to get ahead. Our country has a storied history of democratic socialism (public schools, roads, fire/police, SS, standing military, etc). It's high time we remembered our nation's indelible commitment to compassionate community.
Democratic socialism
would benefit capitalism. The only capitalists that might object are drug, insurance companies and our corrupt government that accepts their campaign funding .Employers would welcome public funding of health care and education .
An educated electorate would never elect a President that is bankrupting our country, both morally and fiscally.
Be careful what you wish for. The more that the Democratic party is associated with socialism, the more likely that Trump wins a second term.
Any Progressive who thinks hyprocrisy lies solely with the Republicans is party of the same problem they are calling out. "Astounding Cynicism" is everywhere. We need two new major parties that can once again do politics with each other. Anyone? Anyone?
1
Given the policies you say these so-called Democratic Socialists are advocating, they would be more correctly labeled Social Democrats. Democratic Socialists call for public ownership of the means of production whereas Social Democrats support private ownership with a more equitable distribution of wealth -- think Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s. Look it up.
Republicans are not against socialism. What's the 12 billion Trump proposes to give to big ag? Or the giveaway of we the people's dollars to big pharma when they prohibit medicare from negotiating price? The oil industry subsidies? Massive taxpayer giveaway to the military corporations?
Last but not least, the recent trillion dollar tax cut for the rich is reverse socialism: rob from the middle class and give to the wealthy. Next up for cuts? Our social security, medicaid, and medicare.
Please vote these scoundrels out of office in November. We will need a liberal executive branch to deal with the right wing Supreme Court.
64
Clinton also made student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy and eliminated Glass-Steagall. So what was he thinking? Does Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have any advice to states on how to pay off their $7 trillion in unfunded pension liabilities? Or is that not important? She better have some ideas, since that debt will crowd out all of her big plans, like free healthcare and free college.
There is a secret to the GOP hypocrisy and how the party gets away with it. When its tax cuts are enacted that add trillions to the deficit, those don't really count. However, when the Democrats spend and add to the deficit, those do count. The bottom line remains the same: awful.
Its all in the positioning. The "Tax and spend Democrats" generates fear immediately. Too bad there isn't an equivalent like "Charge and spend Republicans."
"free public college, a jobs guarantee, guaranteed family leave and more"
These are radical ideas? They are far left?
Free public college has a venerable history. The GI Bill, free college for veterans, gave one of the significant boosts to the US economy of the 1950s and built a solid middle class. Public colleges used to be free to residents of a state and were considered good investments.
If you are going to demand that people work, you need to have some kind of jobs guarantee. When FDR was fighting the Great Recession, part of the strategy was to create jobs. WWII did the job by giving so many "jobs" in the military.
Other nations have family leave policies that are truly family friendly. There seem to be ways to do this without huge costs. If we want people to work, they need support. If we just want to complain that people are irresponsible, not so much.
No mention of that radical idea that people ought to have access to affordable health care. Or that inequality is increasing. Or that schools are suffering from neglect. Republican hypocrisy and malpractice extends far beyond national debt.
1
One of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, Americans voted for Donald Trump to the President of the United States, is because the Democrat party turned its back on the majority in favor of minority fringe groups. The Democratic Party of the 21st century no longer spoke to the needs of every American as it had since the 1930s.
Under Obama, the Democrat party began playing social classes off against each other more than previously, the rich against the poor, urban versus rural, highly educated versus less educated, not to mention fanning the flames of racial, ethnic, and gender animosity, in ways never before seen in American politics.
The Social Democrats don't seem to want to follow Obama's politics of division but rather advocate policies, which on the surface seem to unify Americans around free healthcare, free college education, guaranteed income, free everything, but which in the long run will divide Americans by taking more away from the haves and give to the have-nots, eventually placing private corporations, industry, and personal wealth under state control.
For the majority of Americans who have not been taught the difference between Americanism vs. Communism, as I had been taught in high school in Florida, and later in Russian/Soviet history in college, the appeal of Marxist-Leninism is magnetic until they realize it results in nothing but an Orwellian "Animal Farm," in which some pigs are better than others. Thank you.
How DEMOCRATIC Hypocrisy Lifts Social Democrats. That actually is a more accurate headline and the reason a sizable portion of Democrats have coalesced away from the establishment/corporate Democratic Party, finally realizing the the party of Denny Hoyer, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck-"For every blue-collar Democrat we will lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two, three moderate Republicans in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And you can repeat that in Ohio, Illinois, and Michigan-Schumer, are not working for the average working-class American. The neolibral Democrats that have controlled the Party since Clinton have abandon traditional Democrats and have repeatedly sided with Wall Street, Big Pharma, Silicon Valley, and the industrial-military complex, all to the detriment to middle-class workers.
Mr. Suderman, you missed the entire point of the rise of Social Democrats. It has very little to do with the Republican Party and everything to do with a corrupted Democratic establishment failing to do their job and represent Democrats in this country.
Over the last dozen or so election cycles, I've watched in amazement as fresh waves of true believers appear like mushrooms after a rain, fully embracing Republican hypocrisy as though it were the essence of good sense.
Why can't we pay for social programs and reduce the deficit if we bring in more revenue through higher taxes on the rich and stop fighting all these ridiculous wars that only serve to enrich the military-industrial complex? The savings in the military budget alone would pay for single-payer health care for all. In the golden years of US capitalism (1950s) corporate tax rates were around 50 percent. Are you seriously comparing the ability of the US to manage its affairs with that of Italy?
Mr. Suderman, the advancement of ideas like Medicare For All, free college (or advanced trade school training), free day care, are undermined by calling them "socialist". Socialism is the taking over of the means of production by the state. How do these ideas equate to that?
Likewise, making "populism" as synonym for "angry, uneducated, white guys" undermines the desirable goal of expanding economic opportunity for all, rather than continuing the concentration of wealth by the 1%.
You and your MSM peers are part of the problem that has been ongoing for decades, by being willing accomplices in turning these terms into pejoratives. Your own hypocrisy is clearly on display when you claim to be "fair and balanced", yet use these red flag terms to push a hidden agenda paid for by the donor class.
As to Republican hypocrisy, since when is that news?
1. Debt and deficits do not matter to currency issuers like the federal govt in the same way they do to currency users like you and me.
2. Single payer Medicare for all type systems work just fine and end up being much cheaper in many other countries.
3. Trump supporters are hypocrites on the deficit, morality/family values (Trump has had numerous affairs with porn stars), government experience (Trump had none), supporting law enforcement (Trump opposes the CIA, FBI, Justice Department), national security (Russia), etc.
The Commander in Chief of our nation is a picaresque hero to his supporters and a rubber stamp to the collection of Republican influence peddlers in what passes for a legislature today. Trump - the Restorer - persecutes any man who is neither a cutthroat or a crook; any man who is kind-hearted and decent; any patriot - Robert Mueller - or noble friend of enlightenment and freedom; and it is not overlooked why Trump's and his rapacious enablers' headquarters are located in The Swamp.
5
"To be a Republican is to oppose socialism."
Well, maybe now that the party has been hijacked by the south, that has hated the federal government since Jefferson took on Hamilton and kept hating it more and more right through being forced by federal troops to integrate.
The repeated humiliation of being forced to do what you know is right is a powerful impetus for irrational resentment. The guilt of supporting slavery and Jim Crow has never been set free by an open and free admission of sin, say, through official state mea culpa that we did our black citizens wrong.
And then there is the son's of the co-founder of the John Birch Society, the brothers Koch, who have spent 100's of millions to push their Ayn Randian vision down the throats of any Republican with the ambition of serving another term.
Ronald Reagan was a member of the extreme right wing when he first ran for president, now he'd be primaried for being too liberal.
7
Democrats = Tax & Spend = Deficits
Republicans = Tax Cut & Spend = National Bankruptcy
Wow what a choice:
Driving over a cliff this decade - The Democrats Offering
Driving over a cliff this year - The Republicans Offering
1
KEOB, a more accurate description would be:
Democratic: Tax a million; spend a million
Republican: Borrow a million; spend a million
One method generally covers its expenses.
The other is financial suicide.
Obama's deficits were largely the direct result of the GOP collapse of the economy that collapsed federal revenues for years.
Trump's deficits are the result of 1% welfare and uncontrolled spending.
Thanks for the false equivalence, though.
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@KEOB Remember the last time the budget balanced? Bill Clinton, that was destroyed by a Republican.
4
@Socrates
This is not a false equivalence equation. The facts can be found right here in articles published by the NYT. Historically, Democrats vote for or run budget deficits. Yes you can argue extenuating circumstances, 2008, Iraq/Afghan War expenses, Vietnam War, inability to vote for and pass higher taxes to pay for the programs they support etc. however, the general statement that Democrats vote for and/or run budget deficits is true. It is also true that Republicans – particularly starting with Regan – vote for tax cuts for business/1% and increased spending for programs they support resulting in large deficits that carry on into the future and compound. The intent of the troupe I used is to point out that both sides do our country a disfavor - all be it Republicans more so. The additional intent of the troupe was to draw into sharp focus the hypocrisy – and the disastrous/ruinous nature - of the Republican Party stance on tax cuts and spending. Social spending, infrastructure, military, scientific research, government are all worthy causes but we must prioritize our spending, make hard choices, and tax accordingly.
There are many of us Republican and Center Right Conservatives who care greatly about the deficits and government overspending and intrusion into every aspect of our lives. The problem is that there are not enough of us in Congress (on both sides of the aisle). I did not vote for Donald Trump - he bothers me equally as much as the arrogant Hillary Clinton. His deficit spending is unnecessary and frivolous to say the least.
The Democratic Socialists (an oxymoron if I ever heard one) are encouraging the Democrat Base to support Medicare for everyone, forgetting that Medicare works only because most participants in it pay an increasing amount each year for Supplemental Insurance to cover what Medicare does not pay for. Medicare for everyone without addressing the supplemental insurance issue is hopelessly naive. A minimum income for all Americans again has a major unsolvable problem - it would not be enough for people to live on in most parts of the country just as Social Security benefits are not enough to live on. And a guaranteed income's effect on people's lack of motivation to work is obvious. I can go on and on about the false promises of Democratic Socialism. For the Democratic party to advocate these budget busters is really scary. Hopefully there will be enough conservatives in Congress to stop this madness.
From my point of view supporting democratic socialism is to embrace spending the country's wealth to better the lives of most citizens, not just the very wealthy. It is to see that all Americans have access to adequate health care, food, housing and jobs rather than wasting billions of dollars on unnecessary weapons, graft and corrupt politicians.
It is hard to see how anyone would oppose that, yet a vast majority of Americans apparently do. Trump claims to be working to better the lives of working Americans while doing just the opposite and very few of them even seem to understand what is happening.
2
"Think tanks from across the political spectrum estimate a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system..."
This is like calculating the cost of new car by ignoring gas savings from better mileage, reduced repair costs from a new warranty, and reduced insurance costs from a having a car with the latest safety features.
Does Mr. Suderman and Reason take us for fools?
Nice try. The "left" in all its pure glory is a direct consequence of democratic social economic policies since the 1960's. Its best to own the good the bad and the ugly. You will fare better if you are honest with the electorate.
Mr. Suderman's article is in direct conflict with Thomas Edsall's article in the NY Times only yesterday, "The Democratic Party Picked an Odd Time to Have an Identity Crisis", which gives hard numbers demonstrating that mainstream Democrats are tacking toward the center, and away from progressives' more extreme views. Is Mr. Suderman documenting reality or expressing his own wishful thinking?
Nixon, Reagan, both Bushes and now Trump were all engaged in raising the deficit using unprovoked war, tax cuts and a healthy level of pork barrel spending. They suddenly become thrifty once they are out of office. When in office they generally challenge Paul Manafort with their extravagance.
Single-payer health care means the eliminations of 1/3 of all "insurance-based" costs; the administration and billing departments, the sales teams, the profit for shareholders, the yachts for greedy pig corporate executives.
Most modern single-payer systems cost less that HALF of what America spends per person, and the quality and results of care of those systems is much better.
Wake up America. Get rid of the bloodsucking insurance companies.
2
Does anyone remember how Obama wanted to bring high-speed rail to the country's interior, but Republican governors refused the, presumably, 'wasteful' federal funds? Imagine how many jobs would have come from that? Maybe that was the problem for many of the Republican leadership, dealing with their base, who didn't want to see prosperity under Obama.
Imagine, also, how that would have helped the environment. Imagine how much easier transportation would have become.
The message from the heartland to D.C. was, "stay out of our business -- we don't want your federal dollars." Then when people's living standards in the country's interior continued to slide, Trump supporters in these places said, "the leaders in Washington don't care about us -- finally, here is someone who does."
Maybe it's easier for people to blame others than themselves for their own mistakes. After all, if you vote for policies that make life worse for you and your neighbors, it's easier to support someone who brushes over your past mistakes, rewrites history and allows you to believe you never played any part in your own destruction.
Fortunately, there are enough people in other parts of the country who don't buy into the GOP nonsense.
A couple of corrections are in order:
1- Republicans are not opposed to socialism- they just like a different kind. Last I checked they drive on public roads, use public utilities, attended public schools, use public parks, call the Public Police & Fire Departments and more than a few attended public universities. That's right Alabama- the Crimson Tide Football program is socialist.
Republicans like corporate welfare- like when a railroad had millions to sue my town over an intermodal terminal we did not want, but claimed paucity to cover the cost to extend water & sewer to the site. Congress tacked it onto a bill, so we subsidized a Railroad- this kind of thing goes on every day. Think of how cities subsidize new sports stadiums for wealthy Billionaires.
2- Public Health Insurance will not add an extra $32 Trillion over a decade. If we redirect the money currently being spent we will have enough as weather ready spend more per person by far than any country on earth. Take the money currently being spent in public and private on health coverage right now and spend it more wisely and we can cover everyone. They way you presented it makes it look like a whale of expense.
With a universal coverage system, we can retire the existing Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA, CHAMPUS, Tri-Care, VA Healthcare and all the other programs that currently subsidize health care. And we will not see cans at local stores asking for money to pay for someone's operation or treatment.
12
"Their opposition to the socialist agenda will be hollow, because they helped make that agenda possible." Yes, ironically the Greedy Obnoxious Popinjays are bringing about a revival of socialism in America simply by doing what they are doing: tax breaks for the rich, cuts in programs that help the rest of us. They are, by actively undermining the ACA, forcing a discussion on health care in America.
We are not a third world country and we are not poor. Yet we keep on electing people who have attitudes towards the poor, the unemployed, the handicapped, and any person who is not a white male American that are poor and refuse to take into account how much luck is involved in having a decent life from cradle to grave in any society.
The real GOP hypocrisy is in how they position themselves. Their propaganda about caring about families, family businesses, the average working American is, in short, a lie. They care about the Koch Brothers, the NRA, the largest richest corporations in the country, and being in power. Anything that gets in their way is unAmerican in their eyes. Therefore, any person who is speaking up for gun control, against repealing laws that protect the environment, for workers rights, for a better social safety net, is, to the GOP, a threat to their view of the world. Of course they don't hesitate to claim their government benefits even as they attempt to slash ours.
5
So Republicans pontificated and blathered on about the evils of deficits when it was useful as a political ploy, then, any time they took power themselves, immediately proceeded to increase deficits astronomically.
On the other hand, a young Democratic candidate has proposed programs and ways to pay for them so the deficit isn't increased, but this writer claims that some of her numbers don't add up --entirely in his opinion mind you -- so there's a chance, if he's right, that her plan might increase the deficit.
Therefore, both sides, what are you gonna do.
Republicans lecture about high deficits and then gleefully make them even higher when they take office. Democrats like Clinton actually reduce deficits. Libertarians look at all this and say hey, they're all the same.
Deficits don't really matter by the way. If the writer actually understood that looking at how the government creates money as if it were the same as how a family or individual borrows or spends money is an absurdly wrong way to see it, he'd understand that this supposed battle about high vs low deficits is all pretty much pointless anyway. To read an economist who actually understands these things, Google Stephanie Kelton. At least you should know that this entire debate for the most part is framed in a very small, limited, and not very informed way.
3
The truth is that the Republican Party under Trump has no philosophy about debt or long term strategy. They only care about maintaining power and winning the next election. That means pandering to the extreme wealthy and their unwitting constituents with unhampered advertising and Trump style control of the daily news discussions. As to the long term impact of difficult questions like the national debt and probable inflation? The blame will be given to the Chinese, Obama, “fake news,” the Mexicans, social security, the public unions, or some other target of the day. And Trump’s audience will cheer and chant “lock her up.”
Read and vote. Please.
2
It is very plain and has been so since the 90's. The GOP is a protest party, not a governing party.
3
“The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people’s money.” Wise words spoken by Margaret Thatcher that are timeless. Abe Lincoln: “If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.”
The counterpoint to DT is not moving further left, it is providing meaningful representation for those who feel disenfranchised in spite of their hard work providing for their families. The elite attitudes of Clinton and even Obama made the Democratic Party an enemy to the traditional blue collar voter. This is not the Democratic Party of the Southwest that I grew up with. The idea of a Conservative Democrat is nonexistent.
4
I read in a rather obscure newspaper that some Republican proposed a balanced-budge law this spring in the name of containing the deficit. Of course, if taken seriously, it would force the Republicans to cancel all of their tax cuts and possibly raise taxes to cover the rest of the shortfall. The bill was scrapped.
3
The real criminal act of republicans was to attack policies that basic economy theory dictate are necessary during a recession in order to speed recovery. Increasing the debt during a time of recession is standard operating procedure. But the repubs, in an effort to cause the maximum amount of pain on the American public for having the audacity to vote for a democrat and a black man, fought tooth and nail against accepted economic theory. Rather than lift the country out of this crises, they chose instead to prolong the misery for cynical political gain. Now they and their supporters are reaping their reward pursuing topsy turvy policies that will enrich them while driving the country and the world over another economic cliff.
As to the Democratic Socialists, my own feeling is they are a needed counterweight to the "rapacious capitalism" that has held this country hostage for far too long. As she correctly stated on the Daily Show in the latest republican budget the military was just handed billions that they didn't even ask for and was the equivalent of the entire Russian military budget. The Military-Industrial complex is nothing more than socialism for a specific class of private business. personally I'm ready for the "Health Care complex". "The infrastructure complex", and "The Education Complex".
12
Both parties are in favor of welfare----the difference is merely who receives the welfare benefits. For the GOP, it is manifest in tax breaks, caps on medicare and Social Security deductions, and special financial benefits for corporations and the 1%. For the Democratic Party, it is manifest in housing, nutrition, child care, health care and other forms of support for the neediest working Americans. Only by virtue of gerrymandering combined with so many voters choosing not to use the power of their vote can the GOP continue to fool Americans to believe the GOP has any interest in the real issues and concerns of working American men and women. If the GOP continues to build the deficit to new record highs, they will insist that the already diminished programs for working Americans must be eliminated, ensuring that the only remaining welfare benefits will go to the 1%.
1
How was the $7.7 trillion that bailed out Wall Street paid for?
Government creates money, as do banks, through credit. The gigantic expenditures for two wars and the Fed's many times larger charity to the largest banks show that inflation is not caused by increasing the money supply, at least not until all production is at capacity AND full employment has been reached. It is time to demystify money. Government, instead of creating money through debt, by loans at low interest to the largest banks, as it does now, should create it through direct employment, and through spending on social needs. At the same time, the concentration of wealth in very few hands means that we need Eisenhower-era tax rates to level the playing field of democracy. Democratic socialism can save America. Modern Money Theory can provide it with the resources it needs to do that. This can also include no interest credit to anyone who wants to start a small business, and favoring of cooperatives that are worker-owned to democratize the economy. That Sanders' plan costs LESS than our private health system means asking how to pay for it is a ridiculous question: how do we pay for health care now? No more insurance and doctor payments by individuals and we ask them to pay less in taxes than they did for insurance, with more and better health services.
4
Deficits aren't really the issue among socialists. I think most people will happily pay taxes for basic services that are increasingly unattainable for average citizens. Health care, post-secondary education, child care, and so on. If we need to raise taxes, we'll raise taxes. There are plenty of low hanging fruit around.
Not to be a cynic but after the blatant atrocity of the GOP tax bill, we should return the favor. Pass a tax increase through budget reconciliation without revealing the details, without holding any debate, and with the slimmest congressional majority. Claw back the inequitable gains of the past year, close some loop holes, and add a few more in anticipation of broader social spending.
The right will boo and hiss but the measure will gain popular support when the left uses some of the regained revenue to expand and make permanent middle class tax cuts. The right won't be able to reverse the bill through budget reconciliation because the left will immediately spend the money on popular social programs. We're done here. Let's move on to social programs.
The real problem for socialists isn't actually Republicans. You no longer need a super majority to enact major legislation. You only need to get the service in the hands of voters and you're covered. The real problem for socialists is Reagan Democrats and the Democratic political apparatus. We saw this play out in 2016 and even earlier. Obamacare anyone? The center needs to trust the socialists this time.
3
This article and the current reality shows that the Republicans were liars and charlatans about balancing the budget and being fiscal hawks. The few never Trumpers, like Bret Stephens and George Will, have called to vote Democratic, to stop this destructive herd of lemmings from going over the cliff. All hoopla to stop Democrats, to stop Obama, to stop Clinton were lies and fake outrage to score political points. Although there are rare exceptions, this group of elected Republicans deserve to go. I have to say that there are conservative and left-leaning Democrats, the big tent party.
5
I hope most people understand that socialism has not worked "ever" Venezuela is a prime example a crippled economy in no time. Also, there are over 330 million people in this country so regardless, of your so called taxing the wealthy. They don't have enough to pay for Free tuition, medicare, etc. Besides all these businesses can just as easily leave the country and cripple the economy pretty easily. Everything comes at a cost as economics 101 states, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Socialism has never worked as humans are not perfect. Innovation would subside as there is no incentive, nor would there be an incentive to be rich. For some odd reason ya'll seem to think there is a perfect solution, humans are flawed so politicians and political parties are flawed. Anyhoo, rather than asking the government for fish, why don't you learn how to fish. As I recall the democratic party was against the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, they were also against the abolition of slavery etc. If you guys want to continue the trend and make an overpowered government that can systematically oppress everyone and continue living in these pipe dreams be my guest. Ignorance at its finest
2
@DJ Never works? How about Medicare, does that work? Social Security? The GI bill after WW II? Free public education? The medical care systems of Canada, the UK, Japan, Spain, Denmark and the rest of the industrialized world? When the common good is the goal, it can and does work. Not for all problems and not without learning and program changes over time, but to threaten the extreme of “some kind of an overpowered government that can systematically oppress everyone” just does not pass the reality test as you observe the world’s experience.
What is true is that an unchecked drive toward individual profit will result in a tremendous imbalance in wealth, instability and an oligarch class where different rules apply. Denmark or Canada, your choice.
8
Get with it my dear Mr Suderman-- You continue to accept the underlying premise that we can't have a deficit. Well, not only can we-- but at times we must and even then much higher taxes would keep them manageable. We were doing pretty good investing in this nation when the upper tax rate was 75-90% in the 50's and 60's.
Yelling about the deficit when Dems rule and going hog wild when they rule is not hypocrisy but a conscious Republican tactic since at least 1976 when Jude Wanniski articulated the two Santa Claus Theory--"Democrats, he said, had been able to be "Santa Clauses" by giving people things from the largesse of the federal government. Republicans could do that, too – spending could actually increase. Plus, Republicans could be double Santa Clauses by cutting people's taxes! For working people it would only be a small token – a few hundred dollars a year on average – but would be heavily marketed. And for the rich it would amount to hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts...There was no way, Wanniski said, that the Democrats could ever win again. They'd have to be anti-Santas by raising taxes, or anti-Santas by cutting spending. Either one would lose them elections." (Common Dreams--https://www.commondreams.org/views/2009/01/26/two-santa-clauses-or-how-r...
stephenadairvernon.blogspot.com
As a European it is always fascinating to read US misrepresentations of foreign concepts like “liberal” and “social democrat”. The bulk of Western democracies have universal healthcare, less inequality, better schools, better care for environment. And healthier public finances. It is true the US needs to have a debate on healthy public finances. And on spending and taxation priorities. But your bipolar political debate is not served by ingenuously mixing them all together. You can have any combination of them, just decide which you like
5
Wow. How is it that the NYTimes gets every analysis of the left so wrong?
Americans are turning to socialism because of the failure of Democratic Party leaders, not because of the Republicans. The Democratic party used to be the party of regular working people, but is now largely run for the super rich by the super rich. This frustration with the last 40 years of neoliberal policy culminated in a spectacular failure with the election of Trump. Now people have had enough. They are waking up to the fact that the peoples' party has been hijacked by a corrupt crew of self-dealing, sanctimonious politicians. It's the reason that the word "liberal" is a much dirtier insult amongst the left these days than "conservative".
The left expects the NYTimes to get this kind of story wrong. It's the propaganda organ of choice for nervous liberals, and it wouldn't do to challenge them with the truth.
3
@AM - Well said! In fact i think the current pickle we find ourselves in is not just the fault of Republicans, but of a Democratic Party which gave up its ideological positions under the Clintons and decided to break out in a run to the right to follow the Republicans. Meanwhile the Republicans looked behind at the pursuing Democrats and ran ever further rightward, eventually over a cliff, as it were, where we now find ourselves. Even Nixon would be considered a leftist compared to the current Democratic Party establishment. The hard left ceased to exist in this country shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Whenever I hear conservatives railing on about "the left", "socialists", or "communists" (especially when they use those terms for Republican-lite Democrats like Obama) to justify their ever-rightward march, I think of a man running from ghosts, or a dog chasing his tail. It should be little surprise that you can only run so far to the right before you bump into fascism.
My only qualification for writing this comment is that I have lived in Sweden for 22 years, a country with a multi-party system that requires paying careful attention not only to the names of the different parties but also their history, their ideology, and their present goals.
My comment: The Times needs to enlist the services of academic experts who will clarify what lies behind present American usage of the terms and concepts socialism, democratic socialism, liberal and more.
This is needed because it is not at all clear that what the present author refers to as "Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's brand of expansive, expensive socialism..." is at alll what Swedish scholars and political party leaders would call socialism.
Although the author writes that Ocasio-Cortez "has embraced...a blue-sky vision of American socialism - free public college, a jobs guarantee, guaranteed family leave and more.." all that is being referred to is what is seen by all Swedish parties SD to V as just basic 21st century essentials.
Note that the headline uses the designation social democrats, exactly the name of one of the three leading Swedish parties. Yet this article and quite a few others seem to be determined to brand any move for change as SOCIALISM, horror of horrors.
Making America Sweden is not at all to make America socialist. It is just to make America a bit more fair for the lower 2/3 seen in SES terms.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
10
Sorry, but my guess is that it will be a long, long way for the United States to come into being a Social Democratic country.
Even Koch Brothers-funded research tells us that Medicare for All would save us money:
https://www.thenation.com/article/thanks-koch-brothers-proof-single-paye...
But if you insist on asking "How're you gonna pay for that??" OK, here's how:
1. Bring the troops home;
2. End all Corporate Welfare;
3. Repeal the Bush/Trump Tax Cuts;
4. Close the Carried Interest Loophole;
5. Enact a Wall Street Casino Gambling Tax; and
6. Cut the Defense Budget in half, which would still leave it #1 in the World, ahead of China, Russia, etc.
Paid for in full.
Keep the change.
9
A lot of bernie bots are coming out of the weeds to make predictions about the coming takeover of the extreme left. They ignore that the black vote does not want Bernie. White liberals get to be extreme, because after the election they always lose, the white GOP will not touch them. Today black and brown people are paying for their Jill Stein Bernie Sanders folly of 2016. But their kids are not being locked in cages and they are not losing health care and living with kids trapped in bad schools, so they don't care about their ideas being snowballs in hell. For extreme liberals, everything is entertainment and they hollered in 2016 there's no difference between Hillary and Trump. They talk foolishness because they are whites who are save from GOP policy after they toss the election.
Another Trump hater in the NYT masquerading as an Economy Man.
1
The deficits are crazy. But the tax policy is even more insane - we are tumbling into a national scale Kansas disaster. Donald Trump and the psychotic leprechuan Mulvaney have pointed the country into a nosedive that will end in ruin.
Democrats and other adults will pick up the pieces, per usual.
7
In terms of debt and fiscal responsibility it seems both parties have lost their minds. They are playing with your taxpaying dollars like children with the parents stolen wallet in a candy store. Does average America have any recourse to the lunacy being expressed by both sides? If ever there was a time, an opening, for a third party I think this is it, eh?
John~
American Net'Zen
If socialism is paying taxes and spending the public purse wisely on health care, education, infrastructure and welfare for the poor then I'm a socialist.
12
Republican hypocrisy on the deficit has been obvious since the Reagan administration.
199
How überlibertarian inherent incoherencies make people ... reason 3:) 3:) 3:)
Republicans like Ryan are hypocrites who dance to the tune of their rapacious capitalist puppet masters? Who knew?
4
Instead of being called "How Republican Hypocrisy Lifts Social Democrats", this article should be called "How Koch Manipulation Helps Republicans Destroy Social Security and Medicare."
The Koch's already got their "giveaway" to the wealthiest financed by "working-class and middle-class" Americans, as Democrat Conor Lamb correctly described the Republican Tax Plan.
Reason, for which Suderman is managing editor, is financed by David H. Koch and Sarah Scaife (nearly 4 million dollars per year). Suderman pretends he's going after Republicans when he's really setting up the next Koch position by imploring Republicans to return to non-existent principles. The Koch's are making sure their "giveaway" is financed by gutting every program we've paid for, including Social Security and Medicare.
I'm certainly no socialist, but many of the economic ideas Democratic Socialists propose are similar to what FDR successfully created. FDR created Social Security and public works programs not only kept countless hardworking Americans from starving to death, they gave Americans jobs and the means to build America's infrastructure. They had the added benefit of saving America from becoming a fascist or communist totalitarian state. The likes of the Koch's have spent nearly a century stealing our money from these very programs and thereby destroying them. Suderman is at it again here, advocating for the Koch's who pervert social and economic policy so it benefits them and hurts everyone else.
5
Republican hypocrisy should make us all think about how we want our tax dollars spent.
Under majority Republican “representation,” our tax dollars are going to wealthy individuals and corporations. They are raiding the coffers of public money for private gain.
Public money should be reserved for public good and public gain. Infrastructure. Education. Defense. Social welfare. These are what make for a strong nation and a strong people.
Americans, you are being taxed but not represented. Nothing is being invested in the public anymore thanks to Republicans. When our bridges crumble, and aquifers poisoned, we shall have no redress, for the most foolish among us have chosen to elect hypocrites instead of honorable representatives. They call it public service for a reason.
4
You have to spell it out a bit more clearly for the common folk. $439 billion was the deficit in Obama's last year as he dug out from the 2008 bank theft....and the deficit is more than $1,000 billion now, after the Republican raid on the budget. There, I fixed it for ya.
7
Politicians have only two goals: get elected and get gobs of money to get reelected. The "people" have nothing to do with it.
2
If I go out on the town and max out all my credit cards, no one would call my splurge an example of how well I am doing. But Republicans massively increase the national debt with tax cuts and say, "Look how great the economy is doing under Trump." Ridiculous!
4
Three trillion dollars spent on "quantitative easing," the Fed's buying bonds to boost the capitalists' stock prices, the greatest raid on the public treasury in the history of civilization--Another two trillion dollars (at least) thrown away in bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq--Plus $800 billion every single year in wasteful military spending, protecting the investments of US corporations around the globe.
And your free market commentator is worried about the effect on the Federal budget of increasing spending on health care to the level of other countries?
It is basing our economy on endless imperialist wars, which benefit only the super rich, that have bankrupted our country and moreover brutalized the mentality of our people.
The GOP ideology help the rich get richer at any cost even when it means siding with the oil companies and fossil fuels to destroy the earth.. The majority of Catholics are for the death penalty and Pope Francis in against it. He supports the plight of the immigrants around the world and his Catholics in America take kids away from their moms and dads by voting for men Trump who are brazen enough to do it. The Popes pleas about saving our environment are his alone as the Catholics in America vote for men who are harming it. Us Democrats are for what this Pope is for and want to live in peace even with our allies. The GOP are against living in peace in America and the world and Trump is showing the GOP true colors.
A claw back of the GOP's tax cuts is the only sane way to proceed once the Democrats are back in power. Then they should feel free to spend just that much on progressive social policies. After all, what was good for the goose is good for the gander.
3
Republicans are fond of claiming that tax cuts don't cause deficits: spending on entitlements causes deficits.
In truth, Republicans (remember Dick Cheney's comment that deficits don't matter) are not concerned about deficits when the President is a Republican but go bonkers if there is a deficit when a Democrat is President.
It is really a question of priorities. Deficits are OK when the money is spend cutting taxes or paying off defense contractors and fighting wars. Deficits are bad if the money is spent on the needs of the 99% and not on the profits of corporations and the rich.
You’re wrong, Mr. Suderman. The newly found enthusiasm of some Americans for Socialism has very little to do with whatever hypocrisy Republicans display (there’s most definitely no shortage of that), but with a new, post-1989 generation who absolutely refuses to even look at the systematic failure of the ideas they’re pushing, and to learn from history.
I understand that even if Bernie Sanders would win the presidency, it’s unlikely that he would confiscate companies and send people to the Gulag. But the lesson of history is that even without such extreme measures, leftist ideas inevitably bankrupt societies.
If Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is too young to know and to arrogant to learn, Bernie Sanders should know better. But he was to busy consorting with Communist apparatchiks to learn anything (for those too young to understand the reference, look up his visit in the USSR).
1
Don't call it hypocrisy. It's simply the total lack of any ideas from a bankrupt party headed not coincidentally by a skilled practiotioner of bankruptcy.
5
The Republicans have taken the road of "if I can't have it my way, I'll wreck it". Their end game is creating national crisis by de-funding government. This sets the table for re-writing the rule book for governance and social norms in America.
This attitude is the essence of Trump's base and his success. It becomes the rationale that enables more moderate Republicans to get what they want without taking any responsibility for the destructive outcomes sure to follow.
Dems - whoever they are - need to call out Republicans for this behavior. They also need to stress that immediate relief for all of us comes from reducing the military expenditures and getting control of health care costs...followed by education funding (college and after school programs). None of it happens without campaign reform and jettisoning establishment Dems that have been taking money from lobbyists for way too long.
It is very ironic that these social-Democratic ideas have become fashionable in the US almost a decade after they have entered the twilight in Europe. Germany has had a round of reduction of the welfare state, and so did Sweden - and those are some of the strongest European economies. France is trying unsuccessfully to do it for more than a decade, and Italy is stumbling on reform since the Cold War ended.
You want “Medicare for all” ? Stop using the Scandinavian countries as examples - those are small, ethnically and socially homogenous countries. Look at Italy - large, with mixed cultures and awful government-provided health care. You can’t get anything done unless you slip money under the table to the doctor.
27
@Andy I live in Italy and this is simply not true. Italy ranks third for the best health system in the world, and I have been operated on, my daughter and wife stayed in the hospital for 11 days at her birth due to complications and we were charged nothing beyond our taxes, which are no higher than what we would pay in the US at our income level. I would rather pay for a health service for all than pay an insurance company for partial and unguaranteed coverage, pay hospitals that seek to cut costs and maximize profits, and pay for a bloated military. Yes, wealthy people tend to wait for the after hours when doctors, who owe the state 30 hours a week of free service provision, can then charge higher fees for private consulations. But most people use the national system for most things and it works fine. Italy's woes have nothing to do with socialism and everything to do with artificially-induced austerity due to Euro membership and ECB and German obsession with deficits.
6
@Andy - Your response has me thinking of the three bears. The US safety net is pretty hard ... maybe Germany's was too soft and there's a point between that's 'just right'.
@Andy, why look to other countries in Europe as an example of what Medicare for all would look like. Why not just look at Medicare for those 65 plus?
It is a popular program that provides a basic level of health care. If you want thrills like prescription coverage, or botox coverage, you buy a supplemental from a private insurance company. Simple.
As for Mr. Sudermans` assertion that Medicare for all will cost 35 trillion, that is most likely a false estimate based on the total medical expenditures on the country over 10 years. Of course Medicare for all would not have to pay for botox or prescription, or a myriad of other coverages because supplemental policies bought from private insurance companies would cover those kind of expenditures.
The money we now pay in premiums for private insurance could easily be funneled into a funding mechanism for Medicare for all. Savings ensue from decreased administrative costs, and the fact that Medicare for all does not need to make a profit, unlike private insurance. Simple.
5
We all know this guy Trump is a complex person. Complex may be too kind. Dysfunctional might better describe the man.
The notion of destroying "everything Obama" is what drives much of what Trump says and does. In doing so, he destroys the Office of the President, the entire federal government, and our standing in the world, not to mention it's a huge distraction from the work that need to be done "...to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States".
As a result, we all suffer. The people who suffer most are those of us who saw a glimmer of "hope" during the Obama years. It's painful to watch that drift away at the hands of someone who is so un-Obama.
But, that's just my opinion. My name's Ken. What do you think?
In the past 70 years, the budget deficit has exceeded 6 percent of GDP under only one president--Barack Obama. Under President Obama the federal deficit exceeded 6 percent of GDP four consecutive years with deficits equaling 9.8, 8.6, 8.4, and 6.7 % of GDP during 2009 - 2012. In other words, when Republicans fretted about deficits under Obama they were criticizing a situation that was genuinely worse than anything we have faced in our lifetimes. The numbers don't lie. The Republican criticism of deficits at the time was not hypocritical, but Democratic criticism of deficits now that they have been substantially reduced in terms of percentage of GDP is hypocritical, since they had no problem with much worse deficits.
1
@Charles: In other other words, when Obama criticized W's deregulation-induced economic collapse he was criticizing a situation that was genuinely worse than anything we had faced in our lifetimes. Stop ranting about Obama's deficits, which were part of a successful effort to save the economy, and compare them with the fake president's deficits, which are part of an effort to ... throw money at the military? extend welfare to the ultra-rich while crippling services to those who actually need them? build his wall? all of the above? You apply words like "hypocritical" to those who disagree with you--but who deserves them?
Socialist farming. Farming the government. Remember GM being called government motors? Hypocrisy. Let’s take people’s hard earned dollars by taxing them away and transfer the money to politically favored groups. Not groups of poor people, sick people, or college students, but instead to the corn state people who are already cashing in by forcing us to buy their wretched corn based ethanol whenever we gas up our cars. America has plenty of socialism and this is what American socialism looks like.
3
It is the Democratic Socialism or the European-style Social Democracy that is tearing the Democratic party asunder. The party is doomed to decline, as long as it does not free itself from the attached to its coattails loud-mouthed politically correct, militant feminists and vegans, anti-tobacco, pro-cannabis, and anti-2nd Amendment elements.
1
Two thoughts come to mind:
First time you fool me shame on you. Second time you fool me shame on me. Democrats should feel ashamed that they have been fooled by Republicans.
Back in 1990's California passed a bill called "Three strikes you are out". Perhaps Democrats should use that to call out Republicans - they have already used 2 strikes.
The sub-editor (if there is such a thing today) deserves to be reprimanded for a headline that grossly misrepresents the Democrats (like Ocasio-Cortez) that Suderman is talking about. The headline calls them "Social Democrats," but Suderman calls them "Democratic socialists" or just "socialists." Is the left still afraid of owning up to what it believes?
Suderman is harsh on the Republicans. They gave a bipartisan budget deal a college try. They even got to the altar with President Obama, but he ditched them. The public gave a big yawn and re-elected Obama. Over dozens of columns, Paul Krugman mercilessly skewered the Republican leadership as "deficit scolds." (He has changed his tune lately).
Face it, the American voter got the government and the policies he (and she) deserves. There is nothing hypocritical about abandoning a lost cause if trying to revive it will just play into the hands of your opponents. Let history record that the GOP did what it could, and if the economy blows up, it is because the Democrats played politics with our kids' futures.
2
It is understandable that Democrats react to variations in GOP policies. It was a long step from Ike to Reagan, and on the way, the Southern Strategy kicked in. Most Republicans today know nothing of political history or of the forces that made the politics of today's America. Most Republicans alive today have never known an America that was not the global hegemon. Ditto most Democrats. But an essential motivation of Democrats must be to protect the people from the excesses of right wing politics. That becomes more difficult when conditions give rise to Know Nothing Republicans and to bewildered Freedom Party Republicans--and when the gene pool of intelligent Republicans has been drained after decades of RINO hunting. A central trait that all Democrats must recognize in modern Repubs is that they detest government, and consequently, deficits are tools in their destruction of the Federal government. Add that to their racist and xenophobic proclivities, and you have the modern GOP.
1
The Trump Republican party has abandoned all pretense of being anything other than a vehicle for skewing government benefits to the very wealthy, at the expense of the environment, the debt, the health and safety of ordinary citizens, and the international prestige and influence of the United States. Under Trump, the Republican policies he as championed have gone directly opposite of any contribution by government to improving the current life and future of ordinary citizens, while entrenching the already "rigged system" in favor of the very wealthy. Trump's federal judiciary appointments guarantee that any redress will be fought in the courts by those very wealthy few, the 1%-ers currently ears-deep in the economic pie at the expense of everyone else. Trump's governing philosophy is 'Them what's gots gets more, them what's got lots gets lots more, and them what don't got get even less.' Trump's whole effort to distract and degrade the facts and reality are an attempt to keep those fooled by his con job from eventually catching on... while he and his ultra-wealthy cohort continue to loot.
Democrats must abolish ICE !
The author needs to check his facts when he says:
"Over and over, Republicans cast Mr. Obama’s rising deficits as a profound social menace, a form of budgetary terrorism that threatened the country’s future."
PRESIDENT Obama didn't have rising deficits. Fiscal year (FY) 2009 was Bush #43 last budget year and had a record deficit of $1.4 trillion. In Obama's last budget year, FY 2017 we had a deficit of $665 billion. Deficits FELL by more than half under President Obama.
1
it's not complicated:
shed the empire!
slash the military!
go 100% renewable!
tax the rich!
any questions ?
2
Bernie will continue to be a perennial candidate and cost Dems votes.
Ocasio-Cortez is currently reassessing her positions becasue FB closed down the pages she got her policies from (why would the Russians want to advance Socialism and defeat Crowley, the Dem in line for Speaker?).
Why is there a small group of utopians?
There always are.
If you want to help the Democratic Socialists, buy some of their swag. Here's a bag with Karl Marx's visage: https://store.dsausa.org/karl-marx-200th-birthday-tote-bag-tb61366.html
Mr Suderman has only just discovered Republican deficit hypocrisy? Has he forgotten that Reagan tripled the debt over 30 years ago? And the largest deficit of some 1.4 trillion (10% of GDP) in history occurred in FY 2008/9 (Bush's last) primarily occasioned by the worst crash since the 30's as were the subsequent large deficits of the early Obama years that he ultimately brought down to about 2.7% of GDP.
2
The rise of real economic progressivism (call it socialism if you want) has nothing to do with the Republicans at all....it has to do with the signal failure of Democrats to champion real progressive economic and social policies for the past 25 years.
If Democrats were out in front fighting for universal healthcare, universal paid vacations, universal paid maternity care, free or very cheap public colleges and universities then the progressive/socialist movement would not need to exist. Sadly, the real (and seemingly the largest) hurdle to dragging the US back into the first world (in terms of its social policies) are the corporate Democrats. They have been the bulwark for corporate America against having to pay living wages and solve America's healthcare and infrastructure problems.
Watch that bulwark get washed over and washed away in the next twenty years. We've had enough!
2
Socialism is coming- better get used to it. The simple fact is that advances in AI and robotics will create an economy that just doesn't have enough jobs for everyone. Even white-collar jobs will be effected.
Although both parties creates deficits, there is a huge difference. Repubs cut taxes and create deficits while Dems increase taxes and create deficits. Sorry Peter, social Dems are DOA.
Why the hand-wringing about how to pay for Medicare for All? The current system is killing us, often literally. It is blowing apart local school board budgets and personal budgets. It's incredibly expensive and inefficient. And we are worried about replacing it with something cheaper and better? Why? The only answer seems to be that the insurance company lobby is powerful enough that we go along with this insanity.
2
The Republican Party found lying, distortion and fear to be valuable tools in their attempts at acquiring and maintaining power across the nation a long time ago. Clearly its not limited to the deficit which is a great example. Remember the death panels they tried to convince the country that would take place if the ACA was passed? Science denial, the dismissal of climate change, immigration, the absence of action on reasonable gun control laws and more recently the introduction of "alternative facts" and claims of fake news all while the Republican Party is either silent or complicit in it all. They don't want the free press in a position to tell the truth on them. The Republican Party, including the evangelicals are now a movement and no longer a viable political party that actually represent the best interests of their constituents. Those who will lose healthcare, jobs, collective bargaining, clean drinking water and civil liberties have not yet been impacted by Republican policies and are all the people present at Trump rallies where the truth is never addressed and an atmosphere of Us against Them is applauded even as the nation is further divided. This division is Trump and the Republican's only true weapon since their policies are folly. But now it's at dangerous levels and democracy is faltering. We have a shot to stop it in November so I'm cautiously optimistic but by no means certain tyranny will not prevail.
It is not just the young Progressives, but older Progressives like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who lead the charge.
What everyone one of the Progressives must do, besides the math, is to get out the vote in November.
Otherwise everything is for naught.
2
The GOP hypocrisy is easily consistent when cast in terms of where the money goes to: more money to the rich, less or none to the poor. The hypocrisy is in pretending otherwise so they minimize the latter in good times (‘reduce the debt’), and maximize the former (via ‘trickle-down’ and tax cuts) under the pretext of boosting the economy. Until there is no money left to squeeze out of government and taxpayers, all the while successfully blaming the left for the debt
2
Its difficult to mount effective rebuttals, and challenges, to the myraid falsehoods surrounding current healthcare costs in the U.S., that are being presented as fact, by media, government officials (Federal, State, and Local), and other "independent" well known, and "respected" learned individuals.
What is being presented as fact, is not, and is the product of skilled perception management methods, created by experts in very powerful enties such as the Rendon Group.
The characters, professing their "new" understanding of the needs of the people, they so cavalierly, until now, dismissed, are from both political parties, from corporate boardrooms of those who seek to benefit, or (horror of horrors), lose big-time, if a genuine Canadian/European style taxpayer-funded healthcare system is born in capitalist Heaven, otherwise known as the United "in raping its people" States of America.
In NY, even Cuomo is on board with a rigged single-payer plan, intended to head off real Medicare For All, a living nightmare of trillions in lost revenue, which Big Insurance, Big Pharma, Hospital Corporations, and medical service providers are in stark terror of.
Educate yourselves, research, examine in detail the eminently fair Canadian system, listen to no one, especially ignore politicians, their media mouthpieces, and the dozens upon dozens of email/texts blitzing your electronics as their fear mounts.
The battle is joined; Big Business intends to win the status quo war; stop them.
4
Will the media please, please educate itself on Socialism. There is the Democratic Socialists of America. One of its founders was Michael Harrington, a political scientist, who served in the Kennedy Administration. They are more of a "Socialism Lite", not much different then Canadian, European, or Australian center left. Not very hard considering the last three decades has seen the Democratic Party move to the center right. There is the Socialist Party of the USA which traces its history back to the IWW and Eugene V. Debs. While that party may be farther left, the failure of Centrally Planned Communist States by the end of the twentieth century has moved most socialists farther to the right. Neither party believes all capitalism and private property should be abolished. Please get the facts straight since most, in general, do not. Since most do not, no candidate who is of the Democratic Socialist party should say so in their campaigns.... ever.
2
Thus spake Dick Cheney: "Reagan showed that deficits don't matter."
1
Republicans can see our government continues on a dismal path created by Trump, and we're in for the worst imaginable. Here comes this inept, ill-equipped television performer with multiple bankruptcies as a real estate guy.
And he simply cannot be presidential.
Then he turns out to Putin's Puppet, just as Hilary said. And wastes time creating controversies-- every day he debases the office of the presidency. You'd have to be blind to not see his connections, alliance and fidelity to Putin and Russia.
Too hard to defend: Trump might even be indicted.
1
One day the people will wake up to understand the true power of democracy is the vote.
We have the power.
2
Not with Gerrymandering and closing down voting polls and voter I.D.!
Some fun trivia for the “right” side of this argument:
The seating arrangement in the Houses of Congress was modeled after French Parliament, the nation from which a great deal more of the actual enlightened thought which influenced America originated.
In another nod to the nation that gave us the Statue of Liberty, the very colors chosen for America’s flag were modeled after the French flag and its symbolic representation of ‘liberté’, ‘égalité’, and ‘fraternité’.
All of that said, people were obviously possessed of the same tragic human flaws as we are today, they just didn’t have the same technological advancements as we have now (a surprising amount of which would not exist were it not for Albert Einstein, which is a good case for immigration).
@ubique I haven't checked your assertion about the Congressional seating arrangement, but your assertion about the flag design being modeled after the French flag is incorrect. The US flag was designed in 1777, probably based on the flag of the British East India Company. The French tricolor was designed in 1790 and modified in 1794. Liberte, Egalite, and Fraternite was a phrase coined in 1790 during the French revolution.
1
@Eric Sargent
Hmm. I suppose I should do more background research before taking the word of those at the Ceylon...
What is all this hyperbolic obsession with this “left wing fringe”? I’m reading article after article planting the seeds of fear as the overarching theme.
4
Exactly! This fringe of the Democratic party, while we are ruled by the extreme right. New York Times: stop pandering to the right wing. It’s not working, you should know by now.
I tend to view Democratic “Socialists” as fake Socialists. Maybe it’s because I live in a Red State, but to me real Socialism is what’s happening in Venezuela. There, in order to become more Socialist, a dictatorial Government seizes private companies. They say it’s to turn the companies over to workers, but they’re so corrupt that doesn’t happen. The result is that no private companies want to locate to or invest in Venezuela - lest their assets be seized- and the country’s economy is on life support. The very people Socialism purports to help, workers, are the ones who suffer the most in Venezuela.
.
I don’t think most Democratic “Socialists” want to follow that model. Even if they believe in employee ownership of companies, I don’t think many would want the Government to forcibly take over companies. They would sooner help companies form ESOPs; strengthen unions; improve pay and benefits.... But most of all, from what I can see, Democratic “Socialists” are looking for a robust social safety net, strong education and universal healthcare. So am I. Everyone should be.
2
As Americans sit anxiously on the doorstep of Fascism, you decide to write a piece lamenting the possibility of the opposition party, which controls none of the 3 branches of Government, potentially embracing a platform of public healthcare and education.
What can I say?
Your boogeyman doesn’t scare me the way my boogeyman does.
2
Wow. Medicare for all would cost 3.2 trillion dollars per year over what we pay now. Most studies agree. Guess it must be a bad idea.
And this is why this article is a bunch of hooey.
1
Democrats need to stand for improving health care access and lowering costs for all Americans. They can't promise Medicare for All. Nice slogan, maybe, maybe not. But making things better, that is an achievable goal.
There are 525 members of Congress. There are untold numbers of interest groups and lobbyists and PACs. There are legitimate financial issues.
We are on one low peak with our current system. There are any number of higher peaks visible around us offering a variety of different national health care systems.
In between are valleys full of crocodiles.
Maybe we can get to the Medicare for All peak. Maybe we would do better to get to one of the other peaks.
We need to start moving, we Dems can all agree on that. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good.
1
Deficits will certainly continue and probably increase regardless of which party is in power. Duh. So gov debt will continue to increase, probably at an increasing rate, long term. Significant inflation to reduce the burden of that debt - aka cheat the folks who lend money - has become a primary objective for gov policy. The last decade brought probably the lowest sustained U.S. inflation most of us will ever see.
I find it hard to believe that we cannot have Medicare for all and free public college and still not pay down the debt. How does France (just one example) pull it off and still have significantly less debt then we do. The notion that single payer would cost $32 trillion is pablum from conservative think tanks and falsely spread by (apparently) incurious journalists. All other advanced industrial nations have universal health care and costing their countries much less then we spend with far better outcomes. We spend 50% or more then everyone else and still have many without any health insurance at all.
5
@Dave
The classes oftentimes have enormous enrollments and the quality of education is not particularly high at many French universities.
That's how they pull off free public college.
Check out the below link.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/french-universities-cris...
Nonetheless, I suspect that we can learn from France's failures in this regard and find ways to make higher education much cheaper for promising and hardworking economically disadvantaged students.
And I think that single payer health care is a much more practical option than our current health care system (which is enormously costly and inefficient).
2
@ToddTsch Certainly we can improve over other systems but the main part is to do it and then learn how to do it better. The problem in our country is our failure to be pragmatic because we keep trying to stick to our predetermined 'principles' Lets start the Pragmatic party :)
My take on this issue is that it looks like our country will always obtain massive amounts of debt regardless of who is in power. However, it is confusing to me as to why conservatives scream “Watch how we use our money!” when the ideas of Healthcare and affordable tuition are proposed, yet are silent when the wealthy are given tax cuts that they don’t need. I know that I am not alone when I say that I would not mind at all paying taxes if I knew that it was going towards the good of myself and the rest of the American population. While many conservatives argue saying: “We already complain about taxes so much already. Imagine how much worse it’ll be when the government demands more!” To which I respond, the main reason why people complain about taxes is because-- as of now, it’s taking away the money that they need for themselves to pay for medical bills, disgustingly expensive tuition fees, and basically just making ends meet. If we knew that our tax money was going towards the things that at we stress about paying for in the first place, then perhaps we wouldn’t be too mad when we are asked to pay a little extra. As an American citizen, it would not only be my assumed responsibility but my pleasure to pay taxes that I know are for the good of the country.
3
"Think tanks from across the political spectrum estimate a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system, the challenge would be to finance the enormous increase in government spending on health care."
And that's a bad thing? I see this figure bandied about regularly, yet the same articles never get around to mentioning how much of it would be offset by increased Social Security/Medicare contributions. Yes, payroll withholding will go up, but in the long run the average person will end up with a net reduction, when they're no longer paying for health insurance. Nobody worth listening to is claiming healthcare would be free for everyone, but it would be cheaper than our current profit-driven system.
2
"Socialism" as defined by the right wing is anything that benefits the public. As we all plainly see, anything that benefits the wealthy is not "welfare" - although it certainly is - no, it is "job creation", even when it plainly does no such thing. What the right refers to as socialistic is called middle-of-the-road, ordinary, effective government by the rest of the world. Effective government funds infrastructure, good public education for all, assures either free or low cost higher education, job training, health care, and economic support for people who are unemployed or unable to be employed. (Yes there is such a thing. They are children, the elderly, and people with disabilities all of whom deserve a life of safety and dignity.) Countries who embrace these values are more cohesive, healthier, longer lived, less violent than ours, and the people are happier. Who knew effective government should provide for the common welfare? Oh, right, our founding fathers did.
We live in a country that demonizes common human needs while idolizing and enshrining cruelty in the form of government policy that withholds nearly all aspects of effective government for its people while lifting the people in the 200 - 400 foot double and triple hulled yachts.
I am with the Democratic socialists. I want what our founding fathers envisioned: a government what works for the common good. Billionaires, get with the program or get out.
10
Interesting, but sort of the same mindset that just knew that Clinton would win. Let me know the candidate that can win and I'll have a better idea if you are on the right track.
When I was a callow, naive young college student in the mid 80s, Republicans successfully sold me on the following two things:
1. Government deficits were important in the long run, and
2. They neither sincerely cared nor believed #1.
Primarily due to my increasing certainty in the latter thing over the years (and to a lesser extent, my growing doubts about the former), I quit listening to a word they said about deficits (or interpreted talk of deficits as code-speak for getting rid of entitlements).
I'm not sure that all of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's ideas are realistic (I'm also not sure that they're not realistic). However, her arguments are largely internally consistent, appear to be sincerely held, and - though I might quibble with the particulars of policy - are generally congenial with my values (e.g., providing affordable health care and education for everyone).
As such, I'm gonna hear her out and her ideological friends out.
11
Medicare For All will create thousands, if not millions of jobs.
The country will need health care workers of every single kind.
The demand for medicines and health care products will increase, leading to more jobs in those industries.
We'll need more hospitals, leading to more construction and operational jobs.
Americans will become healthier, leading to less time missed at work and school.
The people in these jobs will pay taxes, leading to more revenue. The communities and businesses will benefit from increased spending. More people working means less people dependent upon government aid. All of this will help offset the costs for Medicare For All.
You would think all of this would be highly desirable from a Republican viewpoint, but no. Giving the already rich another $100B is much better.
Trump and his children will personally benefit. He doesn't see any gain for himself with Medicare for All. So Trump is against Medicare and for the 1% tax break.
Paul Ryan & Mitch McConnell are fine too. They both have family members who will reap thousands if not millions with Mnunchin's tax hustle for the 1%.
Vote Democratic on November 6th.
Every seat, every office.
Changing Congress is our best hope.
Vote.
8
Social Democrat ≠ Socialist
Mysteriously, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have adopted the title Democratic-Socialist, reminiscent of Eastern European Communist Parties, when anyone reasonably acquainted with their policies see them a somewhat conservative Social Democrats, such a have formed governments in Germany, the UK and Scandinavia. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are even conservative when compared with socialists and social democrats in say France - indeed much of what they espouse would be closer to European Christian Democrats like say Angela Merkel than the German SPD.
I am mystified by the decision to adopt the title Democratic Socialists by politicians who (a) are not socialists; (b) are in a country where being a "socialist" as opposed to a social democrat is likely to "scare the horses."
9
The author is right about the GOP and their irresponsible fiscal approach, but the "democratic socialists" (more accurately, the social democrats) don't see their policies as a reaction to Republican policy, but neoliberal policy, which both parties partake in, but the Democrats really like to lean on.
The whole issue is really about creating deeper systemic change and reinforcement, and policy that supports that. These are not radical ideas but things proven to work. After 3 or more decades of rightward economic and social policy, the "further left" (which is hardly that far left; folks just can't see that because we've moved so far right) really just wants some more meaningful reformist effort. Everything from wages to healthcare is on the table to effect that shift.
The response was to our own party. There has been an undercurrent of discontent with the Democrats for quite some time. Democrats have been tossing single-payer around since 1969, when Ted Kennedy wanted it. Same with increased minimum wages.
Also, while I really admire and volunteered for Ocasio-Cortez, let's not bill these things as her ideas. She is new and still needs to win her final race. These issues, including the jobs guarantee, are straight out of the Bernie Sanders handbook. No matter how much the media will continue to try and marginalize him, that is the undergirding to the entire progressive movement. I'm glad to see Bernie's ideas are gaining ground.
7
History reveals that when there is an oppressive political regime then the opposite happens in a democracy, where social values are imbued in the very structures of the democratic institutions.
As the Republicans have abandoned American democracy,
for a Trump -Russia ideology, the Democrats will come in and change the very process of democracy, as the people take back control of the political agenda of equality.
"We the People".
8
Mr. Suderman, the fantastical US deficit and debt first made its presence known under Ronald Reagan. While Reagan was saying on TV "cut government spending" he was sponsoring the largest rise in government spending in non-wartime history, and, possibly in history. Remember Reagan's "Star Wars" one TRILLION dollar program in 1985? Yep. That was all deficit spend. And, it also was all for a socialist platform called: welfare for military contractors who produce nothing at all. The real socialism in this country. You need to write a second column on that. All Republicans since Eisenhower have not cared one whit about the deficit.
9
I would disagree on one point: George H.W. was a Republican serious about the deficit. He saw the mess Reagan left. He went against his campaign pledge and raised taxes. He signed Gramm-Rodman-Hollings into law. He did a lot of the heavy lifting that made it doable for Clinton to follow through
2
What a great article! Think about it- on a day when it is reported that the market cap of Apple has reached $1 trillion you could sell the entire company and pay for only one year's worth of US debt. The longer we continue to kick the can down the road, the harder it is going to be to fix the problem. We need to face the fact that both entitlements and military spending are going to have to be cut.
1
Donald J. Chaos & Co. are the party of wrong. We do not need to run this extreme level of debt. Fiscal conservatism has vanished from the face of the earth. We do not need to keep plowing millions and billions into our military. A large group of our citizens are hurting economically. Our economy has experienced a sea change. Unemployment is down, yes, but many of those jobs do not pay a living wage. It is demoralizing to work a full time job and still be living paycheck to paycheck. The Republican "Big Government is the problem," mantra becomes self-fulfilling when it is starved of funds rather than reformed to work more efficiently. Grover Norquist is the enemy of the people. Blue Wave in November!
5
All very true, but also very old news. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the federal government was running a surplus and paying down the national debt seemed an achievable goal. Bush of course enacted sweeping tax cuts while at the same time going on a wild spending spree (Medicare Part D, trillions of dollars borrowed to fight his wars) with help from the Democrats. "Deficits don't matter," VP Cheney said at the time. The fact is that politicians of both parties have for decades been fiscally irresponsible, spending our money willy-nilly in order to keep getting elected.
4
"Think tanks from across the political spectrum estimate a Bernie Sanders-style single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system, the challenge would be to finance the enormous increase in government spending on health care."
By eliminating the burden on businesses to fund employee health care and requiring that they increase employee wages commensurate with that cost reduction, coupled with an increased tax rate on all wages and investment income, the generated revenue stream would be more than sufficient to cover the additional government spending on health care and reduce the deficit, while the net effect on the income of the individual would be an increase since the cost of government health programs provided by other nations is 50% less than what we now spend on health care. Why this truth is not self evident is because the news and entertainment media is complicit in the effort to keep labor wages low to bolster the income of the investors. As long as we continue tolerate moral injustice of the wealth inequality in this country no solution for our social problems will be forth coming. The strength of the economy is greatest when the median income has the greatest participation, and weakest when the extremes are the largest.
10
Good to see your comment published.
I've noted that "freedom of speech" gets stepped on in subtle ways, in complicit media, if it might cause widespread focus on corporate/government tactics which continue to disenfranchise the poor and the middle-class, and maintain the desirable status quo.
Comments focusing on issues you describe, are not published, or published when interest in the report is waning, and if published (try and monitor this tactic), placed within grouping wherein sophisticated "something is better than nothing" prognostigative fear-mongering discussions occur
I submitted a comment, earlier, describing the efforts our corporate owned government, and our corporate media, are together engaged in, seeking to engender support for a psuedo "single-payer" system, negotiated with, and with portions written by Big Pharma, Big Insurance, Hospital Corporations, and myriad ancillary medical services, so that the psuedo savings has the appearance of approximating a real Medicare For All taxpayer (employer and employee) funded system.
The only fair solution is the successful Canadian and European models, which members of my extended family live with and enjoy.
Any government having the gall to seek to eliminate, in favor of an avaricious corporate for-profit driven behemoth, in Canada and Europe, would find itself overthrown.
NY State, with the endorsement of the corporate tool, Cuomo, is pushing hard for psuedo single-payer, screw the disenfranchised masses plan.
1
Mr. Suderman unfortunately believes that the electorate is reasonable. Republicans (and many fence-sitters) will continue to believe that the Democrats are big spenders and the Republicans are prudent managers, no matter what the facts are. Somehow, money spent on wars and tax cuts for the wealthy don't figure into their idea of deficit spending, only money spent on social services. The facts explained so well by Mr. Suderman have been made clear for so many years that it is hard to believe that anyone's mind will change now. Perhaps a few swing voters -- we can always hope.
7
1. Universal healthcare is not a radical idea. Every developed country in the world has it.
2. There's nothing fiscally responsible about our healthcare system. We spend around 18% of GDP on healthcare and costs rise every year at double or triple the inflation rate. Medical costs are literally bankrupting people. Meanwhile, these reckless countries with universal healthcare somehow manage to produce similar or better results at half the cost.
3. Our bloated healthcare system is a tax on American corporations, which bear a large portion of the costs. We spend around $5,000 more per capita on healthcare than the OECD average, and the disparity grows every year. The additional cost puts American companies at a disadvantage.
4. Education is an investment that creates value. It produces intellectual property and increases productivity. We're a mature economy with an aging population. If we want to grow GDP at 3% - 4%, we need to invest in education. This isn't a radical investment.
5. Now is an opportunity to strike a grand bargain with Democrats to socialize healthcare and privatize social security.
6
I agreed with everything you said until you said that it's time to privatize Social Security. It will not be a good idea to privatize Social Security. Your Social Security investment should never be exposed to the risk of the market and never be made available for investment professionals to profit from.
7
@Daniel Tobias
I was with you until the privatize Social Security part.
@Daniel Tobias
You lost me on 5.
One, because the Democrats aren't suggesting we socialize healthcare, just go for a single-payer system. There's a big difference. Two, why on earth would you even consider privatizing social security? That runs completely contrary to what legit progressives are trying to do in terms of securing the social safety net.
1
I like the adjective social before Democrats. That probably means some are social while the others are not. As an aside, what do these others, obviously the majority, stand for or believe in?
Your thoughtful and equity minded GOP has nothing to be afraid of.
"Capitalist," "socialist," "communist" are all just labels of a continuum of economic policies. America has never been a 100% capitalist country as there are still anti-trust laws and regulations on the financial market. Even the old Soviet Union was not completely communist as bartering is forever present in human interactions. The only relevant question is where on this continuum should a society sits so that there is innovation, growth while providing sufficient security net for people who are marginalized in this competitive process. I never understood why some people get so worked up about it.
6
Financing health care in a single payer is not an impossible task as “deficit hawks” seem to pretend. Since the overall cost would be lower than the current wasteful private system, all a democratic socialist would have to do is to set up a “health care tax” calculated as a percentage of income and family size.
Ultimately for most families this would result in a dramatic reduction of health care costs and a massive improvement of coverage. For sure, the “risk takers” who today refuse to take up health insurance will be forced to pay, and wealthy people will have to contribute more than today. But you would think that something that reduces costs AND improves coverage for 95% of the population would be a sure winner.
Republicans will scream “tax increases! Socialism!” but democratic socialists have the duty to explain their solutions clearly and honestly, showing people the maths. Only this way they will have a chance to win the hearts and minds of the 99%.
4
We already pay taxes - monthly health insurance, college tuition, day care, care for the elderly - we just don't call them taxes. If people had to pay another tax for health care, but no longer had to pay for health insurance (which takes out the administrative paper pusher cost and profit margins) I for one would be willing to pay it, as my costs would ultimately be lower than before. I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking this.
8
Yes, Republicans can't play the deficit Chicken Little much longer but they've set a booby-trap for Democrats with their fiscally irresponsible tax cuts. When they get sent packing, Democrats will be left with less revenue to fund current operations and programs and probably a recession to deal with as well. In other words, Republicans are robbing the treasury on their way out the door so that progressive Democrats can't deliver on their healthcare promises or any other "socialist" policy to benefit the middle and working classes. How do you convince middle-income taxpayers to give back their Republican tax cuts, however small, in order to get lower-cost, better health insurance or tuition-free college for their kids and grandkids? It can be done, by the right salespeople with the right pitch, but it will be a hard sell.
4
Money as it used to be does not exist any more. There is no pile of gold in Fort Knox backing US debt any more. Money has become abstract and is moved around the world by computers, which shift sets of data from one bank account to another. Some financiers are talking about a totally cashless society. Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are used by all kinds of people who are trying to hide their wealth from tax authorities. Talking about debt and credit has become practically moot. If we want more "money," the government prints it and spends it. Right now, all of the spending is being done on socialism for the rich and powerful. The real question is: are the rest of us going to continue to allow the world's oligarchs to dictate the terms of our existence for much longer, or are we going to do something about it and turn the tables on them?
6
Do liberals understand how disingenuous they are being ? They practice the same logic that Suderman describes ... They criticize a principle that someone else doesn't live up to ... but rather than live up to the standards they expect in others, they just abandon principle to realize their leftist goals.
Yes, the GOP (my party) betrayed their own belief in responsible budgets by passing tax cuts without commensurate spending reforms. But if Dems really believe in paying for their grand spending plans, they would demonstrate this rather than use GOP irresponsibility as an excuse to do the same. Obama gave us 5 of the 6 largest deficits in our country's history - each greater than $1 tn. He took us from 72% debt/GDP (about the same level as that 20 years prior) to 105% of debt/GDP (not too far from Greece). Dems shouldn't throw stones in glass houses.
And they do the same thing re inequality. Many studies have shown that income mobility comes from getting an education and getting married before having children. In response, liberals list all the impediments faced by the poor - dilapidated schools, men in jail rather than in their children's homes, etc. But rather than trying to fix these challenges, liberals use them as an excuse that being born poor is a life sentence ... and justifying redistribution programs they favor anyway.
Yes, we've got challenges. But we don't solve them by abandoning our principles. Ends do not justify the means.
4
Obama didn't give us deficits, the recession did. It increased payouts for things like unemployment insurance and food stamps and reduced tax revenues at the same time. These are the processes economists call "automatic stabilizers" and exactly what are needed when private expenditures tank. Then we had a much too small "recovery" package that did not increase spending sufficiently and relied too heavily on tax cuts.
Blaming Obama for his deficits has been a consistent line of attack from the right. It is also entirely disingenuous.
1
@Peter ---- re your last line. No, it's not 'disingenuous" - it's a LIE.
And I say that from half a world away.
Republican love of deficits started with St. Reagan, who adopted voodoo economics as a way of pretending to be worried about deficits if they continued to exist but claimed that they would in fact vanish. They never in fact did, but every Republican administration except Pappy Bush claimed they would, and Pappy lost a second term because he abandoned voodoo for reality.
Their goal is to create huge deficits and worries about huge deficits and use the combination to chip away at the New Deal. They usually deny this goal vehemently, but enough of them proclaim the goal that the others know to mute their opposition to deficits (using voodoo economics) when they are creating the deficits, and turn their opposition up when Democrats are in power. They are in a win-win situation here: if the Democrats increase the deficit they have a powerful issue to run on, while by increasing the deficit, the Democrats bring the day closer when insolvency will force reducing the New Deal; if the Democrats do not increase the deficit, they will probably keep it down by reducing part of the New Deal. The alternative would be to reduce the military-industrial complex, but as long as we have any plausible enemy, this is very difficult and is resisted by anyone in Congress who has a base or factory in his or her district (which is virtually everyone).
3
Many years ago my economics teacher explained to us seventeen-year-olds that most of a nation's debt is in the hands of its people. In addition, the so-called National Debt is so astronomically high that there is no way it could conceivably be paid back, even if national governments were to begin taxing the super-rich at, say, 90% of their income - which would not be so hard on people getting (I deliberately avoid the word "earning") over $100 million p.a.
In effect, as the article points out, the posturing of politicians relating to govenment dept is a load of baloney, intended to put the fear of God into the minds of those they want to vote for them.
4
During the Great Depression most government programs were funded by debt. So were the two world wars. The Keynesian and monetarist remedies for recessions is low interest rates/fiscal stimuli --- credit i.e. debt. If debt produces wealth and shared by society, it would repay multifold. Government debt owed to her own citizens is
simply a "book entry".
In agricultural, feudal societies the returns are severely limited as compared to industrial capitalist societies. Money itself was based on limited amount of gold/silver holdings. Hence the fear of 'credit/debt.
Indeed, had Bill Clinton funded the "savings" on Universal Health Care and Free College Tuition, US would have been far better off economically and socially. Instead, it was lost in tax cuts to the Rich (speculation and 2008 Crash) and the Iraq War.
3
The one thing that I have always disagreed with the Republican Party is how to reduce the deficits. It seems to me that they're taking the short term view that cutting costs = saving money. While that isn't wrong, it works when you're talking about a bank account, it's overly simplistic when it comes to an economy.
When it comes to an economy, a government needs to invest in its infrastructure, its security, enforce the rule of law, etc, in order to make our country a safe place for investors to park their fortunes in. But the GOP cuts funding for infrastructure (not sexy enough), our police force (each county should police itself aka like in the 17th century), our education (privatization and competition, etc), and so on. It's precisely the same mistake Europe is making with their austerity measures.
While an economy should indeed not be centrally-planned by the government, the government does need to ensure that conditions are in place to foster a thriving private sector and economy, and to step in when troubles arise, instead of mindlessly repeating "competition will fix all problems".
3
There's a very simple reason why Social Democrats are getting a lift. They stand with the poor, the working and the middle classes. That's most of America.
The Republicans and centrist Democrats see their first obligation to be to big corporations and the rich, the recipients of all the wealth that our current global capitalism generates. Working class frustration with establishment Republicans and corporate, centrist Democrats gave us Trump.
If Democrats would realize that they can't serve both the rich and all those who aren't rich, if the Democrats would realize that they unambiguously have to stand with the poor, the working and middle classes, like the Social Democrats do, they could win over the majority of Americans.
14
The author may not understand his own prophecy. Authoritarians can be as brutal on one side as the other. The backlash is coming and coming hard. It is going to be mass confiscation of wealth (ill gotten or not). And the Supreme Court? I don't think they stand a chance against the 2nd Amendment folks.
1
@True Believer - would you consider raising the top income tax rate from the current 39.6% to 50% to be something akin to "confiscation of wealth"?
That would be roughly a 25% increase for top earners. I'm sure many wealthy would howl in protest.
Curiously, 50% is the rate to which Ronald Reagan LOWERED the top income bracket. Previously, during the Nixon administration, it was 70%.
8
@ J Jenks
During the Eisenhower presidency, the top tax bracket was 91% @ 400,000.
1
"To be a Republican is to oppose socialism."
The say that, but socialism for corporations and elite individuals rockets on under Republicans today, as always.
I know Bernie and Ocasio-Cortez say they are Socialist. But they really aren't, not as that word is meant anywhere else. They are no more socialist than the Republicans, except as to whom they would give help.
Main Street vs Wall Street is not a choice of socialism or not, but which one gets it.
Democrats can honestly say they'll do for most Americans exactly what Republicans do for those who least need the help.
It is sort of like highlighting the health care that Congress gives itself while we can't get it.
11
Medicare is the biggest bargain around because Medicare negotiates to pay only a fraction of what providers bill. Let us start with enabling those 55 years of age to buy into Medicare at a slightly higher rate. Most people currently pay $134 a month, so the younger enrollees might pay $200. Medicaid should also be expanded to every state. As regards higher education, start by providing free education for community college and trade school. Investing in America isn't Socialism, it's promoting economic soundness.
28
Let everyone buy into Medicare, not just older Americans.
One point not touched on in this excellent analysis: Politicians on either side of the aisle don't want to touch the REAL third rail: Asking Americans, especially those in the top 20 percent of income, to accept what amounts to a lower standard of living for the benefit of all — universal health care, guaranteed income, "free" public higher education and all the other "socialist" goals. We all live on debt, and in debt we trust. That ain't changing as long as we want a new car every three years, a new smart phone every year and a new excuse to spend more money every day. I'm just as guilty as the next person. I don't want to think about taking the hit, but at some point, especially if today's drunken-sailor Rs remain in power, the economy will force the hit upon us.
6
"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."
-- Teddy Roosevelt, Chicago , IL , June 17, 1912
3
Many Americans have been well conditioned by the GOP credo of government as a threat. But corporate profits are then identified with Freedom, Liberty, and American values.
So people strongly object to paying taxes for Medicare for All, low college tuition, infrastructure and green energy. But they don’t mind being exploited by corporations paying off the politicians who are supposed to represent average voters.
They don’t mind paying taxes and getting less for it, so corporations and the rich can get tax cuts, while they expropriate the nation’s productivity for profit.
They don’t mind that we have to subsidize insurance profits with our taxes, instead of our taxes going toward our health care. Repubs are always claiming to ‘protect our hard earned money from big govt tax confiscation’. While they let their mega donors keep candidates in captivity to big money.
Are there any limits to American voters’ capacity to be scammed by the use of our own founding ideals as propaganda?
22
Holy cow - the federal government CAN NEVER RUN OUT OF MONEY.
Congress decides on what to spend and authorizes the spending.
Treasury spends as directed by Congress.
If it needs to spend more than it has in its account at the Federal Reserve, it just creates a bond to borrow back the money it created, and then spends that money.
The Federal Reserve buys from and sells into the private market those bonds to set interest rates to meet their policy goals.
That's it.
The government can never run out of money.
The government doesn't need your taxes to fund anything.
The government doesn't need tax revenue from the rich to spend.
The government spending will not create inflation unless government + private spending exceed the productive ability of the economy to produce goods and services to sell.
The government taxes to reduce the spending power of the private sector to make fiscal 'room' for government spending + private sector spending to avoid stoking inflation.
"Where will the money come from?" The answer is always "The government decides to buy it and they go and buy it."
THEY CREATE MONEY WHEN THEY SPEND.
Alan Greenspan in testimony to Committee on the Budget, House of Representatives, March 2, 2005: "...there is nothing to prevent the Federal Government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the real assets are created which those benefits are employed to purchase?"
3
Don't leave out that the huge deficit sets up "dire need" to raid Soc Sec and Medicare, longtime GOP goals.
20
Republican 'politicking' is pure hypocrisy, Ryan and McConnell lying racists that, opposed any and all of his proposals, even those originating from the G.O.P. while Obama was president. And now, oblivious of their previous voicing of caring for debt and deficits, the G.O.P. has shown it's real face, opportunistic to no end. They do not deserve to govern, given how abusive they have become, counter to any reason nor common sense. And certainly for lacking integrity.
8
The Republican law makers will make the middle class and the lower middle class so poor that they will eventually realize they have been had by their party and begin to see the benefits of socialism which has got a bad name because most people think they are being denied the opprtunity to realize the American Dream by socialism whatever that means. I think the Republican law makers take this to the extreme so that the reversal process will hasten
4
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suffers from the same problem as Bernie Sanders, and I say that as someone who voted for Mr. Sanders in the 2016 Democratic primary.
It is frustrating that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez does not know details about her plan's financing, or the details about its revenues. Yes, Republicans are hypocrites. Yes, their so called wonks (e.g. Paul Ryan, Larry Kudlow) are charlatans. Still, I would feel better if the Democratic Party's progressive wing spent time with health care economists to formulate a financially sound single-payer system. It is within reach, as a $32 trillion/10 year plan is less than our current system, and much less than what every other large developed nation pays (per capita). So her system should end up saving Americans money while providing universal coverage. But she should know the details.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has passion, a critical characteristic of a successful candidate. Hillary Clinton's lack of passion was a key factor in her mediocre success running for office. But passion needs to be combined with a mastery of the details.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, I like your stand on the issues. But please do your homework.
4
DBman,
C'mon, not every leader is a numbers wonk.
That's why the quarterback has a team.
Specialists, or as the Despotic Dotard Dennison likes to say, "I hire only the best~!" But hopefully ours really are such.
Sure its fun when our leaders can recite actuary tables, for some of you maybe. Many of us just get glazed eyes. It becomes statistics and numbers. Both of which have been proven to be malleable and deceptive depending upon use.
Give me a smart, charismatic leader with good principals, the right ideals and ethics. Then bring in his/her team to work out the how's and whys to make the ideals realities.
By the by...This story is telling you the Koch bro's own study proves MFA can work, and work better.
Just as Sanders economy plan had 200 economist sign on saying it could/should work. Including Robert Reich.
But you won't hear that here in the NYT.
("It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.)
1
Just like a Republican apologist, Mr. Suderman claims that we can't afford Medicare for all, yet we can, somehow, afford the biggest military budget on Earth. Although he didn't weigh in on the supposed impossibility of free tuition at public universities, his scolding otherwise follows a familiar set of talking points: the US can't afford social services, it can't afford single payer healthcare, it can't afford education, but it can always find the means to wage a new war. I'm really, really tired of these old lies. Note well that Reason.com, with which Mr. Suderman is affiliated, is a libertarian organ, and David Koch is one of its trustees. The apple never falls far from the tree.
18
Thanks for explaining that connection.
2
"Borrow and Spend"
"Tax the Poor, Feed the Rich"
The slogans write themselves.
4
Oakland progressive writing here. Democratic Socialists are far from "true-blooded socialists." I haven't heard a single one of them call for nationalizing banks, energy producers, vehicle manufacturers, metals manufacturers, farms, clothing manufacturers, tech corporations, etc. Scandinavian countries, for example, are also not socialist. They're social democracies, or social welfare states, and the vast majority of their citizens are the much better for it and have been for about a hundred years. It'd be really nice if, before they gave their views a name, our Democratic Socialists had thought about both what a true-blooded socialist espouses and the American, generally inaccurate/ignorant/propagandistic definition. Merely calling themselves Democratic Socialists will likely cost them and the Democratic Party a few votes. C'mon Bernie, you're smarter and wiser than this.
7
It is true that Senator Sanders' proposals are New Deal style reform nostrums, not revolutionary Socialism as understood by old time American leftists such as Oakland's author Jack London or the labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn from the Bronx or the Swedish immigrant, labor martyr Joe Hill.
But for the first time in decades, Sanders has put Socialism back on the public agenda. Which puts questioning capitalism on the agenda as well.
Young workers are questioning the inevitability of a system that offers them no future. The Socialist lightning is out of the bottle & cannot be put back in.
5
mngould,
"Merely calling themselves Democratic Socialists will likely cost them and the Democratic Party a few votes."
Hmm...maybe.
It kinda depends upon the DINO and how the DP reacts to possible allies. Seen as how so many of their idea's and policies intertwine. If the DP's are a big tent, then DS's should fit right in. As they do now. They may also bring new voters into the fold. As Bernie was (accurately?) accused of doing. I.e.. sheepdogging.
Bernie should also be given credit for owning the label and showing/proving the ideals and goals are solid and to the benefit of everyone. Being a small s, or even a big S socialist isn't scarlet letter. America is a socialist country using successfully socialist ideals and policy's.
Now whether Americans and the DP wish to acknowledge such is a different story.
Kinda like being called a Liberal. OOhhhh….scary word that Republicans like to sneer. Ohhh...scary! What label won't conservatives smear?! C'mon. They like to call names. Why worry about and react to such playground antics?! So someone wishes to call themselves a Democratic socialist?! A Progressive?! A Liberal?! A Lefty!?
YES~! And dang proud of it. OWN IT~~!
Yes, Bernie was and is smarter and wiser than most. His ideals and dreams are resonating with many. Adapt and adopt what works for you and yours. What doesn't don't.
But jeez, we need to quit worrying about what name the playground bully is going to taunt you/us with.
Grow a spine DP~!
2
Chrice sake, healthcare for all was a Heritage Foundation proposal and one of Donald's promises. it's inevitable and a Koch think tank just re-affirmed that.
https://boingboing.net/2018/07/31/koch-addicts.html
4
Why not have basic healthcare provided as a right for all until age 80, after which point any non-preventative care needs to be paid out of pocket. This would save 25% of the bill. Before calling me callous, ask yourself : who deserves a heart transplant more, a ten year old boy or a 95 year old man? Our choice is both philosophic and economic. To make this work we need to find savings. My own belief is if the state has helped you live to 80, it's done a heck of a lot already
1
Nobody gets a heart transplant at 95! Sarcastic? A joke?
1
The 12 billion dollar farmer bailout sure sounds like socialism to me.
18
Social democrats? Really? Where do you get these opinion writers? Professor at Harvard? Professor at Yale? Professor at Amherst? A person who never was exposed to anyone different than himself.? The only white privilege in this county is these charlatan columnists masquerading as intellectuals. Have they ever left the upper east side? My father has his doctorate in Divinity from Yale but actually has common sense and helped people of all walks of life for 40 years. He actually knows what people feel and care about.
There is not social democrat majority in any county between the Appalachians and LA. Talk to anyone between those two places and you will find the majority of people are in the middle. The middle!!! Keep it up NYT's and president Trump is going to win in a landslide in 2020.
8
I think you are wrong, Brad. Republicans have kept the “middle” artificially skewed to the right since Reagan was in office. Sanders’ surge and even Trump’s narrow, freakish win show that Americans realize capitalism isn’t working for them and want a shakeup of the status quo. Have faith. The money’s out there and so are a lot of fresh ideas.
1
Republicans believe in two kinds of deficit:
the first may get racked up by progressive, yet scantily funded, general social programs that benefit many, if not most, Americans. social security, science, infrastructure, and medicare are examples. this type is always bad.
the second type gets racked up by systematically cutting off the government's income, primarily through giveaway deals to industry and large tax cuts to those who pay the most in taxes: big corporations and the very rich, while at the same time spending lavishly on non-productive things like foreign adventures and the machinery that makes them possible. this type is always good, yet seldom mentioned because t doesn't sound so hot.
if you can believe both these things at the same time, congratulations! you are a Republican.
6
Looking at long term history, both party's share power, in and out of power about every decade, and remarkably, so do American fortunes. Democrats policies result in prosperity, which is mostly followed by Republicans who ravage the prosperity such as when Clinton's enormous growth gave way to Bush's Great Recession in part due to his tax cuts and the astronomical price of oil in July 2008. The Democrats took over and started the recovery.
Quoting a comment I saw here; If you want to live like a Republican, you have to vote for Democrats.
17
Every time I hear that Medicare for all is impossible and it is going to be really expensive I get angry. We already spend $3.4 trillion a year on healthcare (source google/The Atlantic Magazine). So yeah, over 10 years, a decade we are going to spend (or it is going to cost) 10 x $3.4 trillion or $34 trillion.
What we won't have to do is send money to United Healthcare, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, etc. We'll send it to the government and let them pass it out. We won't have any more corporate executives making $15 million a year ripping us off. (And if the Trump tax cut wasn't ripping us off I don't what you'd call it, highway robbery?)
I know a lot of people will say that private industry is more efficient. Well, Walmart has been out stock on Cut-Rite Wax Paper for almost 3 weeks now. I rest my case.
22
Lower the age of Medicare eligibility each year by one year. This approach was proposed decades ago. Current evidence suggests it would be a winner today and in 2020.
10
It's not just Republicans - it's all of Congress and the myriad agencies of government that simply refuse to govern and operate responsibly. Aided and abetted by publications like this, they are answerable to no one but their donors. Eventually they will collapse the USA.
@Keith
No, actually, Keith, it is just republicans. Clinton left a surplus, which Bush destroyed. Obama managed to pull the economy out of the republican rubble, the deficit starting to reduce, and now it has exploded again. If I didn't know better, I would think they were a party of quislings, secretly supported by, oh, Russia, say, or some other enemy state.
1
The choice is actually quite clear. Our nation's future depends on the choices we as voters make in electing our representatives
For example, we could elect a government that funds school lunches for a 1Million low-income children for an entire year OR we can build and maintain another couple F35 Joint Strike Fighters at $500 Million each. The cost is the same - the outcome not so much.
19
Republican policy is established at the donor (oligarch) level where it is bought and paid for thanks to Citizens United. It has nothing to do with federal, fiscal longevity (and never did). It is a "give it to me now" tactic for the rich, like the heist in December they sent to the top 1 percent. Sadly no one can avoid the math that is coming like inflation and much higher interest rates, that will affect all Americans. The Obama deficits ensured liquidity, maintained market-place demand, and prevented more massive job losses; they helped all Americans. And if you want to argue about the approach look what 'austerity' did for England and Europe (just the opposite, so they changed their ways and adopted Obama's approach) The Trump deficits benefit whom? And for the purpose of what?
428
@Brad Burns And the deficits were largely the result of decreased revenue caused by the Bush recession.
4
@Brad Burns
Obama had his priorities in 2009: Make sure the big banks and big corporations get all they need. With what's left, we'll help faltering homeowners, whom the big banks suckered into taking bigger loans that the naive, new homeowners could afford. The result when there wasn't all that much left for new homeowners was massive foreclosures.
Could Obama have acted differently? If his first priority would have been those working and middle class folks who were losing jobs and homes, he could have dealt with their needs first. He could then have nationalized the banks, broken them up into smaller ones, and sold them back to private owners.
But Obama, like any good corporate, centrist Democrat and like all good Republicans, needed to take care of big banks and corporations first.
We need something other than what Republicans and centrist Democrats are offering. The Social Democrats, with their concern for the poor, the working and middle classes, are a welcome change.
@Brad Burns You do know that Pelosi is pushing Pay Go, a right-wing fiscally conservative, austerity type spending program, right? Remember, the donor class contributes to BOTH parties to do their bidding.
1
Democratic Socialist: oxymoron. A Social Democrat is, first and foremost, a democrat. The only "qualified" socialist I'm acquainted with is the "national socialist," -- and we know the harm that gang did.
4
Indeed. Nature abhors a vacuum and that giant sucking sound is the right wing nuts drawing moral, ethics, courage, and compassion out of the room.
10
If we are so lucky as to survive the next 30 months, and emerge in January 2020 with Dem majorities, it would be the height of lunacy to demonstrate that we are the "responsible" party by cutting spending and raising taxes. Here - let's just shoot ourselves in the head. Of course, we will take back the tax breaks of the 1%, perhaps the 5%. And we'll use that money for real things - Medicare-for-All, free college education, the infrastructure we actually need, solar and wind, massive subsidies for all zero emissions energy use. By the way, let's cut the military budget by two-thirds - who, exactly, is threatening the US? - and spend that on a guaranteed income.
8
I agree, with a slight caveat. The President is threatening the US. We are also guaranteeing his income.
2
Thought experiment:
Try this out on a small business, say 10-100 employees
Ask the free-enterprise loving Republican owner how he feels about government-run single-payer. Probably won't be met with much enthusiasm.
Reintroduce the idea a second time, pointing out that he doesn't have to pay a penny to insure his employers anymore. Nada. Zilch. Second thoughts?
Or--let's imagine a self-employed individual that single-payer means taxes go up say $4,000 dollars a year (the figure chosen is on the high end. In Australia, single-payer is funded by a 2% surcharge on income.) She might well be extremely upset that the gov't. is "stealing her money". On the other hand, she'd save say 6-10K annually on premiums plus a deductible of 5-10K plus who knows how much more in case of serious accident or illness.
Penny wise, pound foolish. We'll put up with anything--anything but the dreaded socialism.
32
@bobg
Its insane.
The level of understanding of basic economics, here in the American workplace is abysmal, and any meager savings proposed by the status quo enablers, to head off the lies of adverse effects from true Medicare For All, funded from employer and employee payroll tax levies, is easily designed to be accepted by most workers, especially if the idea of the "Socialism", monster can be played up.
There are none so blind as those who refuse to open their eyes, and see how easily they are being used and abused.
2
Social Democrats are not socialists, even the Cato institute ranks Scandinavian economies as fewer than the US economy.
The increase in the federal public debt over the last 365 days is already $1.17 trillion, according to the Treasury Department's daily count:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/current
6
The media is the handmaiden to this ridiculous and hypocritical trend.
3
Exactly what has Ocasio-Cortez accomplished that she is hailed as one of the democrat's "brightest young stars?" She won a primary that 13% of registered democrats voted in. What are her other achievements?
3
@Suzanne B.
And she announced that ICE should be abolished. The "CE" stands for Customs Enforcement. Its remit includes keeping illegal and dangerous goods from entering the country, and collecting duties on legal goods that are sold at uncompetitive prices. I'm a lifelong liberal Democrat, but I cringe when liberal candidates talk this way. She's achieved "stardom" in a very American way-- being new and not being the same as the middle-aged white guys so common in US political life.
4
@lawyermom When ICE runs around raping, kidnapping, and terrorizing with impunity, they no longer are performing their duties and must be abolished.
@Corbin
Bad management needs to go, starting with Trump and his appointees. Bad agents need to be fired. Bad immigration laws need to be abolished.
But that’s not a catchy campaign slogan.
RESIST. Intelligently.
The real truth is that deficits dont matter nearly as much as they are made out to be. People are stuck in the mindset of the gold standard where you have a limited amount of money. There is a limit at some point when everyone has so much currency there is nothing left to buy, but we are not even in sight of that. The question to ask is what do you get for the money the government spends. With tax cuts...you dont get much except widening inequality and making rich people richer. Spend it on giving people healthcare, educating the workforce, and infrastructure and you get a return that is more than what you spend. Thats the spending democrats want to do. Republicans would be fine with starving children rather than admit they are simply frauds. There is a reason George H W Bush called it voodoo economics.
14
Single payer (i.e. single funder via taxes as opposed to insurance premiums) has a lot of unknowns: https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/jul/21/how-expensi... . Think tank approximations can go awry when politicians get involved--we've seen that before with earlier attempts to reform the health care system.
No matter how we proceed with attempts at a better, more humane and affordable health care system, several reasons for our outlandish costs will need to be addressed, including outsized administrative costs, overpriced tests/procedures/medications, and overuse and over-sale of almost all elements of health care. If we can get a handle on some of those, then we can get a handle on our insane costs.
There are serious plans to cut administrative costs, costs that account for between 15-30% of all current healthcare spending: https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Cutler.pdf ("Reducing Health Care Costs: Decreasing Administrative Spending," by David Cutlere, 31 July 2018).
Trying to do this state by state is nuts. It will take the federal government. From Cutler's piece:
"The Department of Health and Human Services, working with health care organizations, should develop and implement a plan to reduce administrative costs in health care by 50 percent within
five years. The plan should include payment simplification, standardized pre-authorization policies, and integrated medical record and billing systems."
2
@JSK Oh blah, blah, blah! We already have Medicare
and it works, all we have to do is expand it to all. Honestly do you think the current insurance companies and big Pharma and administrative problems can be brought to heel by anything else but Medicare for all.
Single payer or what ever you want to call it works for at least 11 different countries, we can lean from them if we need to, And naturally those corrupt people ripping patients off in our current health care will be fit to be tied, but the only reason we do not already have health care for all is blatant greed and selfishness and corruption here, Our life expectancy is something like 38th in the world and the rate of mothers dying in childbirth is on par with third world countries and so are infant deaths. All because people in medical industries rather have more money than help people live and survive.
And do not get me started on all the doctors and big Pharma people making loads of money over prescribing pain killers. They are only killing people for money. Nice gang huh?
1
Recall the dramatic concern and hand-wringing of Paul Ryan and much of the rest of the GOP congress when Obama requested a few measly tens of millions of dollars of funding to help fight the clear and present danger of the Zika virus arriving in the southern US. They insisted they must find a way to offset the costs somewhere else in the budget without raising taxes.
Now look at these same individuals smiling, completely relaxed and content with a trillion and a half dollar hole they've just blown wide open.
495
@Michael Lueke The hypocrisy of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell on the subject of deficit spending just takes your breath away and leaves you sputtering. Even such principled senators as Bob Coker of Tennessee, no Trump fan, when given a chance to defeat the president, whom they consider to be dangerous to America, declined to do so by voting against their principles for fiscal discipline and for those tax cuts to corporations without finding the money somewhere else. So, please, no more Paul Ryan self righteousness from the Republicans, to say nothing of the combative Mitch McConnell, who would sell his grandmother in the service of his "team", the Republican Party, fiscal discipline or not.
2
@Michael Lueke In support, I'd like to point out that a trillion is a million times larger than a million, not 2, not 10, 1000000 times as large.
1
@Michael Lueke
For duplicitous Republicans of two mouths, it was never about the deficit during Obama's terms... it was all about sandbagging Obama, in every way possible, from Day One.
As a wise man once said, "Just like a bad deed or curse, the chickens are coming home to roost."
The Republican base, which comprises 36-40 % of the the voting population, decided not to voice opinions about the health care debacle, the deregulation of EPA standards( to include the newest one, fuel efficiency emissions!), the de-fanging of Dodd-Frank Act,the family separations at the borders,the withdrawal from two treaties/pacts( the Paris Accord and the Iran Nuclear Deal),both which were negotiated over for several years,the selection of a anti-worker , pro-business Supreme Court nominee, many lower court appointees who are anti-women.anti-immigrant,anti-voter rights,anti-minority, this is the outcome that you get.
I believe that the country, overall, is still center-right BUT with Trump in the Oval Office ,we will continue to see a lurch to the far left.
1
"And if one of the Democrats’ brightest young stars isn’t overly concerned about basic budget math, it’s hardly a stretch to imagine that much of the rest of the party will follow."
Indeed. Following precisely the drift of the essay, can we name any young (or aging) GOP stars truly "concerned about basic budget math," including celebrated wonk Paul Ryan?
28
Do you think Paul Ryan ever looks in the mirror when he wonks? I still don’t understand why he got the wonk reputation.
1
Peter - please explain this.
You suggest that the US shifting to a single-payer type system would be a "challenge" to finance.
And yet in the USA, healthcare consumes a FAR larger share in terms of its GDP (double in some cases) than most other industrialized wealthy nations, which have single-payer or semi-nationalized systems.
It seems to me we can't afford NOT to shift to a single-payer type system. The sooner we do it the sooner we can start saving money.
98
Sanders may have been my first choice, but I voted for Clinton in the general election. A specific preference for democratic socialism as an ideology was no more relevant to me in supporting Sanders than conservatism was in rejecting Trump. It also wasn't about being a millenial or a "Bernie Bro." or anything like that. I just happen to think noble causes are underrated and was willing to fight for a long shot as long as I could. My preference really was that simplistic.
To me Clinton was someone I was excited to support when she spoke of "shattering" the glass ceiling. Not hit or chip it, but shatter it. She was also right to say that the modern world must not abandon places like coal country. It could have been inspiring if she had not shied away from it. Trump was luring them deeper into the mines and she wanted to lead them out! Battles like that, minimum wage, healthcare, etc. CAN be won.
"But Trump gained the presidency, the Supreme Court, etc." Indeed. But Trump, his followers, the GOP and his allies are the only ones responsible for what Trump says and does. Like Jason Spencer debasing himself at the slightest urging of Sacha Baron Cohen... they're on their own self-destructive voyage of self-discovery.
35
It has indeed been clear for years that Republicans only care about deficits when Democrats are in the White House. What the writer does not explain (but surely knows) is the reason for the breathtaking budget-busting passed by this Republican Congress and this Republican President: the Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells and Mick Mulvaneys of the party intend to saddle the government with so much debt that the only alternative will be to cut or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. Unlike the debt taken on by Reagan and pared by Clinton or the debt handed to Obama by Bush II, the massive hole being created by this GOP may well be too big of a mess even for the next Democrat to clean up.
571
@Gib Veconi Just as Democrats have spent decades trying to implement Cloward-Piven, yes? Democrats gave us nearly $10 trillion of new debt under President Obama, more than all other Presidents combined and 5 times the debt added by George W. Bush. The debt reductions of the 1990's were due in great part to a GOP Congress that for once in our lives acted responsibly.
1
@Gib Veconi And even that is a false motive. Social Security is funded by payroll taxes. If anything, the government borrows from it, not the other way around. Cutting these benefits will effectively be stealing from the people who have paid into it.
@Gib Veconi
Well said, ... GOP cynicism grows bolder and more dangerous by the day.
"...this Republican Congress and this Republican President: the Paul Ryans and Mitch McConnells and Mick Mulvaneys of the party intend to saddle the government with so much debt that the only alternative will be to cut or eliminate Social Security and Medicare."
1
I'm delighted that Mr. Suderman decries the hypocrisy of his party, although he both misdates its genesis (the GOP's concern for deficits has waxed and waned dependent on its majority status for far longer than Obama's presidency) and its inherent dishonesty. The Republican party has relied on fantastical economic projections to justify its economic policies for years. Recent proposals for universal health care, expanded family leave, and tuition support may require some deficit spending, but their economic impact will likely cause income growth (thereby reducing those deficits). No responsible economic forecasting suggests massive tax cuts for the wealthy do more than cause deficits. It's not just that Republican policy may have made democratic alternatives more popular - those alternatives are also based on far better logic.
505
@Jennifer: Consider that having the South Koreans, Japanese and Western Europeans fund their own
defense,which they are more than capable of doing, and the money for our needed social programs might be there.
@Jennifer. How do you know Suderman's party affiliation? I believe that he is a libertarian, not a Republican.
Jasper
1
@Jennifer Suderman is not a Republican. He is a libertarian (small "L"), with a long track record of excoriating the GOP for its myriad faults.
1
It seems that we will have a huge deficit no matter who is in power. The question is whether to spend all the money we don't have on the 1% or on the 99%.
889
@HC - The federal government (thru the FED) can create as much money as it needs out of thin air. It will run out of money the day after the NFL runs out of points.
4
@HC That's pretty much the biggest difference between the parties.
2
@HC: The problem is not a deficit, per se. It is having the national debt grow faster than GNP. That happens because Congress is not committed to preventing it, as they are quite capable of doing.
2
I thought to myself, Reason.com, isn't that, that Libertarian rag? (Laughs solo).
Peter, the GOP isn't the only ones pushing American citizens to the left, but also the DNC.
The Democratic party who is against Democracy, just ask Bernie.
People are looking for, and want that second bill of rights. And they are willing to up lift ANYONE who sees the need for social and economic safety for ALL instead of for a select few.
Change is coming and it's better to get on board than write silly articles or opinion pieces trivializing this necessary and unavoidable change which is coming whether you are prepared or not.
I believe there is a statistic/other tracking likelihood of Civil War and the rating is higher now than even after the banks were bailed out. All calculable portions of American living and way of life points to the reality we are at a breaking point.
As Marx made plainly clear, when a system favors the haves vs. the have-not's and as that have circle gets smaller, and smaller the haves are inevitably only causing their own end.
I for one, though not alone, am delighted.
6
Interesting article. The issue is about how to frame the social democratic policy suggestions. Taking universal healthcare, we can present it as the most urgent problem potentially facing everyone of us and thus prioritize it above all else in a political agenda. If you look at all the cost issues in light of this prioritizaton and compare it to the defense budget and more importantly the cost of the current private system you end up with a very different reality than the one presented by the Republican Party; and to be fair by the supposedly center of the Democratic Party. What Bernie managed to do and is now being helped by the blatant hypocrisy Suderman is talking about (at this point you have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to get it) is to let people understand that social democracy is a right rather than a fantasy. Most of the civilized world, especially Weatern Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has had this for a hundred or so years. It works. Let’s wake up and take our futures into our hands from the worst hypocrites since Tartuffe.
13
The article correctly notes the hypocrisy of Republicans. They act like fiscal conservatives when Democrats are in power, criticizing 'tax and spend liberals'. When in power, the same Republicans spend even more than liberals for their pet projects ($12b to farmers, defense etc) and cut taxes for the rich at the same time, resulting in a busted budget and increased debt. They do so by paying homage to discredited theories of Laffeur Curve. Don't believe any Replican attack on progessive Democratic policies.
31
The knee-jerk reaction to proposals of college for all or free medical care, is how are we going to pay for it. Shouldn't that question been asked when the republicans made a massive tax break for the wealthy? That 'break' would have funded college for all, easily(they say the tax break is 5 trillion over a decade, and college for all is about 75 billion/year ) and you'd have a ton left over for health care... Think what we would have gotten out of that for a fraction of the cost! But, instead richer people are richer.
32
2018 election will decide our nation for the next 25 years
5
@Mixilplix
Sadly.
Only to extent not predetermined by electoral theft 2016.
"...when Republicans pretended to care about..."
The above line says it all for the current GOP. The Ryans, McConnells, Trey Gowdy, Pompeo, Bolton -- these, and many, many others have zero integrity. Hypocrisy is their stock in trade. This IS the GOP.
62
@Otis-T ... So if the Republicans are so blatant in the way everyone here seems to realize, the questions then become:
1) Why is it so somehow impossible for EVERYONE to see ... and ...
2) Wow can it be that the Democrats keep letting the RPBs run the same obvious plays on them -- over and over and over and over and over and over and over again ???
Bill Clinton used to say, "fool me once, shame on you ... fool me twice, shame on me" ...
What happens when a supposedly elite leadership group keeps getting "fooled" two / three / four / five / six / seven etc etc etc by the same move ???
Seems like the Democrats need some kind of RADICAL treatment ...
More likely scenario: rising government debt and underfunded entitlement and pension liabilities, coupled with an aging population and increasing debt service costs, will force the federal and state governments to slash per capita entitlement expenditures and pension obligations.
2
Oh, it’s MUCH worse than liberals think. I would have thought that Mr. Suderman, decidedly NOT a liberal, would have twigged to this by now.
Republicans always have given more than a hoot about debt and deficits, and still do. However, the more activist on the right have for some time had a two-stage agenda. The first stage is to drown the administrative state in the bathtub by denying it taxes, and that stage is well underway. But the second stage, not yet aggressively advanced due to the imminence of the coming midterms, is to eviscerate the programmatic infrastructure that REQUIRES the taxes. A one-two punch such as this certainly would bring expenditures in line with taxes and dramatically reduce deficits and debt.
Liberals, on the other hand, take the major elements of that current programmatic infrastructure as an immutable given, and therein lies their confusion about Republicans, debt and deficits. However, Republicans were working hard last year and this one on block-granting Medicaid to the states, and they came close when related efforts needed to shut down until after the midterms.
Hypocrisy? I imagine the Republican version is no more insidious than the Democratic – as in pushing berserker-like for the ACA back in 2010 despite knowing full well that it was a socialist boondoggle, a kluge that likely was unworkable without major surgery and vastly more money than claimed. Each side has its agenda, and calling EITHER hypocritical is a waste of breath – …
1
… they’re BOTH hypocritical in pursuit of their aims.
As to the perception that Republicans by ignoring debt and deficits to advance their agendas will make more attractive the democratic-socialist convictions of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I don’t believe anything of the sort. If Democrats pointed out Republican aims and countered with FAR more moderate strategies, such a perception could be dangerous indeed to Republicans, and not just in the midterms. But, what are they doing? They send out Bernie and now Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to evangelize the admitted and aggressive socialism they espouse.
This brand of socialism simply doesn’t have the potential for turning enough American votes to change current alignments: it’s clearly a crapshoot, an all-or-nothing bet, and if anything it will scare moderate Democrats and the uncommitted into the Republican camp, willing to tolerate excess on the right to avoid a lemming-like willingness to step off a liberal cliff in the name of Kumbaya.
If Democrats want to regain relevancy, it needs to be through moderation, not excess – the brand of liberal excess being flogged simply doesn’t resonate with enough Americans to be effective. But turnabout is fair play: Republicans need to become FAR more rational about how much of the administrative state they CAN eviscerate, having allowed it to develop dependent constituencies.
4
@Richard Luettgen
The notion that somehow America can be the most powerful country in the world but somehow have a government that is small enough to drown in a bathtub seems like quaint nonsense. Why is it so hard to accept that there is a real necessity for government services, and if Republicans succeed in their chimerical quest to "starve the beast" all that will happen is that there will be a backlash that will restore everything that Republicans seem hellbent on dismantling? What a waste of effort!
"Republicans need to become FAR more rational about how much of the administrative state they CAN eviscerate, having allowed it to develop dependent constituencies." Republicans ALLOWED it to develop? It's nice to see you finally admit that all the things you rail against in these pages lie at the feet of republicans. :)
3
If the GOP retains the House & Senate this November they will use the deficit that they created to come after Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The post war GOP actually believed in investing in America and the American people, especially working people. Eisenhower built the interstate highway system and defended the New Deal. Trump may have conned the working class but today's GOP is openly hostile towards unions and labor while favoring capital at every turn, even to the point of ignoring the looming economic disaster that rising global temperatures will inevitably bring. They are cultivating more inequality in an already grossly unequal economic system whose favoritism for capital will drive capitalism itself right off a cliff. Ironically Democratic Socialists are the only ones trying to save capitalism from itself.
16
Pity those poor Libertarians that thought Republicans actually voted for limited government and maximized freedom. Pity also the small businessman and the yeoman farmer who thought capitalism and democracy are hand in glove. What Trump makes obvious is that capitalism bends not toward democracy, but towards fascism, and the choice was never between capitalism and communism, but between national socialism and democratic socialism. I prefer the latter, but I fear that at least 40% of Americans prefer the former.
20
This article is typical for recent columns. Let’s smear Democrats as socialists because one won a primary. Let’s confuse the public on the debt and deficits so that we can make sure no one can propose programs because we just don’t have the money. If you want to know the reality and not the propaganda just Google MMT.
8
The naked truth about our "democracy" is that when it comes to spending and benefits, the entrenched parties promise unlimited benefits to their side and threaten higher taxes on the opposition. This federal cronyism, not Russian meddling, not hordes of illegal voters, is what will end the USA as we know it.
2
As with several of my acquaintances, I do not mind paying my fair share of taxes. Repeat "fair share." I do mind funding plain silliness .... like huge tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. I would be very pleased to see my taxes -- and that of the ultra wealthy -- pay for Medicare for all, college tuition, infrastructure, supporting renewable energy sources, cutting down our federal debt .... sensible spending that would make our nation stronger. If this is where the Democratic socialists can take us, I'm ready.
774
@M.R. Sapp.....seems many GOP voters don't mind funding tax cuts for big corporate profits. They fall for the scam, while the GOP warns them of big govt confiscating their hard earned dollars and interfering with their 'liberty'.
@M.R. Sapp
Me too , I have grandchildren , and I want them to have Health Care and educational to be part of fabric of America !
@M.R. Sapp
All the wealth in America cannot support our current spending, never mind "Medicare for all, college tuition" etc. And as for where Democratic socialists can take us, see Venezuela.
1
Interesting piece and I applaud the honesty in saying things which folks like Paul Krugman have been saying for many years (who which figures from the right, like Mr. Suderman, have not had the courage to say before), but when it gets to attacking Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez the dissembling-bordering-on-outright-lying is a bit hard to take. O-C has quite clearly said that she believes taxes should be raised provide a decide life for the working and middle classes. She has stated that the country took strong actions during the Great Depression under the Democrats, and can do so again. Disagree with her, if you want, but she's been 100% responsible in her statements about paying for the costs of what she wants to do. Which is just as Democrats have been over the past 30 years.
10
@DF Paul - Yes. Thanks for pointing that out about O-C. I can't help mentioning, all through the 2016 primaries Bernie Sanders had a whole section of his website devoted to how he would fund his proposals. And yet "pundits", so-called media experts, kept repeating that he had no plan for how to "pay for all his promises".
5
By now most informed citizens know that trickle-down economics is a farce that is perpetrated on the less wealthy and less knowledgeable by the wealthy donor class who have sold them a bill of goods for their own benefit, i.e. lower taxes.
There is a vast difference in the economic effect/benefit of what the government spends on. There are expenses and there are investments. Investments like health-care, education, infrastructure has both a short-term and a long-term effect while expenses, like military and debt service, tend to have at best a short-term effect.
The difference is basically where and who gets the government monies. The more money that finds its way to the lower portion of the economic ladder the greater its economic impact. The poor and middle classes spend most of all their income while the wealthy do not spend more due to any reduction in their income taxes. Our economy is a consumer economy, and trickle-up has the greatest economic benefit. Every dollar spent by a poor person cycles through the economy as many as 5 to 7 times making each dollar worth $5 to $7.
An economic fact that some can or will not accept is that the better the poor do the better everyone else does.
The perfect cure for poverty is jobs.
20
The Republican Party has shown a devotion to power that ignores all notions of integrity and ethics. Their motto is greed is good. They have become unmoored from reality as they pursue policies that benefit the 0.1% while causing untold harm to the country's finances, the well-being of our citizens, and the future of our planet. Republican politicians have shown a willingness to lie and cheat in pursuit of these goals that is simply breathtaking.
I believe in financially responsible government but I feel only outrage for the craven lies and false promises of Republican politicians. I may not agree with all of Ms Ocasio-Perez's positions but I think she has the right approach. State 5-6 principles of governance and fight for those goals at every level of government from the smallest town to the halls of the Senate. Our country. our form of representative government, and mother Earth need our commitment.
10
It is certainly not the Republicans driving this movement. Stop pretending Social Democracy is some new fashion born of trying times. It's the exact opposite. It's proven itself. The Social Democratic economic and political model is a staple of Western Europe and has been for more than half a century. It has arrived very late to our shores, but not too late. What's driving it's increased popularity here is the track record it has in Europe, where it's sometimes called the Scandinavian Model. It is the immense success of this political model in preserving social and community cohesion, promoting education and employment based on merit, providing health care and services to all citizens and preserving a high standard of human dignity n everyday urban life while allowing for capitalist competition and a vibrant private sector. Ever wonder why everyone is so friendly in Copenhagen and Amsterdam? It's because knowing your society doesn't throw people under the bus means a lifetime without the anxiety of worrying you'll be next.
34
@Arthur I have lived in Europe and think the size of the US and diverse population make it hard to replicate the Scandinavian Model. Each state may need to provide expanded social benefits rather than a one-size -fit -all.
3
We need to consume less government, thus shrinking government across the board, and we need to pay for the government that we consume. Cut spending and raise taxes until we reach equilibrium — a balanced budget. Raise taxes on everyone, not just the ‘rich’ (whatever that means). We all benefit from government and consume it, so we all need to shoulder the burden of taxes. Even at such budgetary equilibrium, it will take decades of economic growth and debt and interest payments to eventually retire the entire federal debt, barring disruption from war or other economic shocks. This is a moral issue: we are robbing our children and grandchildren to pay for our extravagant current consumption of government services.
1
and just think of all the money we would be able to save on groceries if we stopped eating!
4
@Pottree, the federal government currently spends $4.5T per year on a country with 330MM inhabitants. That’s about $55,000 per family of four, per year, of government ‘groceries’ (using your parlance). The average family of four in American only earns about $55,000 per year. Clearly, you believe we need to eat a lot of groceries...
Any honest American knows that Republicans are financial and fiscal terrorists who destroy anything they can get their greedy paws on.
More importantly, I would like to correct one of Peter Suderman's deeply misleading sentences:
"Although Mr. Obama presided over some of the nation’s highest deficits during his first term and added trillions to the total national debt, the deficit did eventually come down."
That sentence should read as follows:
"Mr. Obama inherited a once-every-75-year Great Depression event from Bush-Cheney and a Confederacy of Republican Tax-Cut-Deregulatory Dunces which caused federal revenues to plunge from 2009 - 2012 which led to some of the nation's highest deficits while Mr. Obama happened to be President."
Republican pyromaniacs don't care about anything except tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations.
They are the party of 1% welfare and have been so since at least 1980.
They don't care about public education, health, infrastructure, science, technology, modernity, voting rights, the environment, democracy or anything else that sustains a healthy society.
They are Russian-Republican nihilists whose job is to feather the oligarch class...with plenty of white spite, Christian Shariah Law, guns and bullets, and bread and circuses for the peasant class.
Their leader is a Matryushka-Doll-In-Chief who is intellectually, morally and economically bankrupt...and the GOP adores him.
Welcome to the Republican Mental Hospital.
21
America’s wealth is in corporate assets, and only an increase in the business tax, ending corporate tax deductions for targeted investments like agriculture, and a foreign policy of peace agreements and soft power alliances leading to massive cuts in the defense budget can fund a job guarantee, free college, universal healthcare, public housing. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have been coy about funding. Are they naïve or afraid to confront the power elite and transfer wealth from the .01% corporate plutocracy to the people?
1
Somehow there is always enough money for corporate welfare and benefits for our oligarchs. If that weren't true, the cash couldn't end up in their accounts, but it does. The rest of us make all of this wealth possible by paying taxes and generating profits whenever we buy any item or service. With over 320 million of us, we create immense profits for businesses large and small. The U.S. tax code is written so these businesses can claim deductions, credits and exemptions for everything they touch; they pay little to nothing to the country that sustains them. Republicans like to say of the rich, "That's THEIR money and they should be able to keep it." Well, in truth, that's OUR money. But for us, there would be no profits and we need to use more of our resources for the public good. Universal healthcare too expensive? I'm not buying it.
10
well, some of us enjoy a $60 million payday by selling ourselves to foreign dictators or shorting the price of oil or plasma on the international markets - no consumer sales involved.
8
We may be at that moment in history that the British came to in 1945: Enough with empire, we want a welfare state. But unlike the British, we won't step into this next phase of history in an orderly and prepared fashion with a Beverage Plan, we will in fact stumble into it with no plan, but with a great urge to bring our national policy into alignment with our current state of historical development. That means a drastic increase in income taxes on the richest Americans and on accumulated wealth in general, not just income. Our country is swimming in wealth, but our public sector is dying of thirst. To correct this imbalance will require drastic measures. Call it socialism, if you will, but it really amounts righting a ship that is in danger of foundering.
16
Universal wealth tax. 3%.
1
The post tax cut is proceeding exactly as Republicans planned:
1) The tax cut benefits companies and the very wealthy
2) The deficit ballooned (as expected), which:
3) Allows them to scream about the deficit again, which means:
4) go after entitlements (only those that are for the poor and elderly. Corporate entitlements are OK. Investor entitlements are not only OK, but "good for the economy". Wealthy entitlements encourage growth).
All according to plan.
23
The political pendulum swings back and forth and is constant - if it swings wildly one way, then it will swing back forcefully to the other side. This coming election(s) is not any different.
Having said that, the right still wants to portray things like Single Payer health care, a living wage, peace (end of wars) expansion of Social Security and a true Progressive tax system (where if you make more money that you pay more tax back into society - not less) as radical extremism. These issues are squarely in the center, as the political spectrum has been pulled so far right over a couple of generations, that the center is still right in many cases.
There are candidates that are advocating fearlessly for the policies above and are being elected in primaries and special elections. These are now the bread and butter issues of most Americans. Those Progressive policies that have consistently polled popular are now translating into the America that is decisively Socialist.
Bring on the blue wave.
27
I think the Democrats should make it clear that there is only one thing worst then a tax-and-spend-Democrat and that is a Don't-tax-and spend Republican. At least the Democrats who talk about spending money and wiling to state that truth that they will have to raise taxing to pay for the spending much unlike the Republicans who believe, in almost a religious way, that if you cut taxes, the magic growth fairy will come and all will be great in the world.
Needless to say, you can only get the government you pay for.
8
We already have “socialist system”. Problem is - it only serves the uber rich class of capitalists and merchants of death in the arms industry.
M
20
"Republicans pretended to care about the debt and deficits."
They'll be at it again as soon as the Democrats take back the House in 2018 and the Executive Branch and Senate in 2020. First thing the Democrats should do in 2020 is raise taxes on the top 1% and corporations, and tell all those fiscally responsible Republicans they just want to help them reduce all that bad debt.
10
There's another important difference between deficits under Democrats vs Republicans, or if you prefer, socialists vs alleged conservatives. Much of the discretionary spending under Democrats is directly aimed at resource distribution, through health care or paid family leave or education or many other benefits to the poor and middle class. Thus the beneficiaries of the deficits are very broadly distributed. Republicans generally shun resource distribution and, at their worst, vilify its beneficiaries. So when they run large deficits, the beneficiaries are far fewer and far wealthier. That's where we are today, and it was similar if not quite as extreme under GWBush. Most of us other than die-hard trickle-downers would agree that as a matter of public policy, if we're going to have large deficits, the Democratic version is preferable. The additional downsides of the Republican version are that it is generally dishonest - Dems are happy to tally the resources their intended recipients are getting, while the GOP invents stories about how it isn't really enriching the wealthy when it obviously is - and the Republican version is much more likely to be corrupted by a concentration of political power among its grateful beneficiaries, who form a donor class devoted to keeping the milk train coming. So yes, one can "perhaps imagine" a GOP for fiscal responsibility with integrity, and we all would benefit from it. But now and seemingly always, it remains a leap of the imagination.
6
Republicans like to lambast “socialism” but they still drink water from their taps, drive on public roads, collect their mail from their mail boxes, support their local police and fire departments and our socially constructed military, not to mention Social Security and Medicare. We are already a socialist country, thank heavens!
18
Deficits and taxes. Mr Suderman’s argument about the faithlessness of the GOP to keeping down the former has played before but with little traction for the Democrats. Reagan’s voodoo economics gave tax cuts and growing debt, and remains the secular god for the GOP. Bush I reversed tax cuts in order to get debt under control, and was abandoned to his fate. Bush II had the endless war on terror to hide behind one budget buster after another.
Now, Trump has capitalized on his theatrics to win the White House, outrage large segments of the public, and maintain Republican loyalty with tax cuts benefitting the wealthy.
Has the GOP surrendered their stand on the deficit? I doubt it. Once the deficit negatively impacts the beneficiaries of the present largesse, the GOP will turn to their fallback position held since FDR—attacks on social programs. Welfare, subsidized housing, public education, health care, Medicaid, Medicare, and especially Social Security will become the mantra of needing to be cut to attack the deficit.
Cuts in defense, even though we outspend the next 7 countries combined, never sees the light of day. Cuts in tax breaks affecting the wealthy and businesses are no go with the complaint of harming jobs.
It is only entitlements that create a safety net that draws GOP ire and their economists alarm.
The GOP utilize deficits as a political tool when necessary.
3
Not to detract from anything the author wrote here, but some context is warranted regarding spending under the Obama administration, which only occurred to avoid letting the Great Recession turn into a second great depression. It worked, the economy recovered, and the deficit was eventually reduced.
Now, having inherited a healthy economy, the borrow-and-spend Republicans have no such justification for their current profligacy.
10
Young, motivated by justice, tired of being told no, tired of lies and hypocrisy, the Democratic Socialist movement is coming, growing, and it won't be stopped. It shouldn't be stopped - what we have now only works for the smallest minority - the uber rich! Democracy is going to be restored and there's no stopping it!
Viva la revolucion!
5
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has not won her first election for U.S. Representative, yet the author enshrines her as the catalyst for all of this upcoming progressive change in the country. Poor Senator Warren doesn’t even get a mention. Yes, the scope of Republican hypocrisy on debt and deficits is truly astonishing, but assuming this party survives the corruption and criminality of its Trump years, it is easy to assume that it will reflexively revert to its historical piety on those two policy areas if in the minority. It’s in its D.N.A., even while advocating for preferential treatment for its beloved plutocrats and corporate sponsors.
7
We have leaders in the Democratic party who have been in office for decades while the entire country, and the party itself, have veered sharply to the right. To the detriment of the vast majority of Americans.
But Ocasio-Cortez has very little actual political experience. Sure she's worked as a community organizer and activist, but she's never held political office. For someone who graduated with cum laude honors, she seems unbelievably naïve. Surely there must be a middle ground.
Republicans should care about the deficit, but so should Democrats as well. The number that really matters isn't the deficit per se, it's the ratio of the debt to GDP. Right now, the numbers are just scary. Since you offset the deficit by increased tax revenues, the resultant income that must be acquired to amass those tax figures simply boggles the mind.
The numbers force the Fed to increase interest rates. They're at relatively historic low rates, but higher than other countries. That attracts investors from across the globe chasing better interest rates on government bonds. That also strengthens the dollar, meaning it's that much harder to export our goods and that much easier for other countries to send us theirs.
None of this is going to end well. The funds we're going to need just to deal with climate change are staggering. What's the latest bill for the wildfires? And August has just begun . . .
1
Would you rather mortgage your kids' future, and your own retirement to get and keep healthcare, and educate your kids, who will breathe clean air, or mortgage your kids' future so that Donald Trump can keep more of the capital gain on his real estate investments, and a vulture capitalist can keep more of the proceeds from buying your company, selling the assets, firing you and your friends and shipping your job overseas so that they have more to pop into their Cayman accounts?
How can the Democrats miss hitting the low hanging curve ball right out of the park? But bet your bottom dollar, they are working on messing it up.
7
While I agree that Republican consternation about deficits fades into the ether when they're the ones doing the spending, my support for 'Medicare for All' rises only in direct proportion to my insurance premium and my prescription costs.
2
"To be a Republican is to oppose socialism."
To be Pelosi is to oppose socialism.
To be Feinstein and Schumer or any of the Dem party bosses is to oppose socialism.
The Democratic Party dinosaurs have led the party to the brink of extinction. It's time for new blood in that once functional party.
8
Cost of single payer health insurance is a red herring.
Health care costs are fixed (to a first approximation).
The cost of insurance to cover these costs is also fixed (to a first approximation).
The only difference is whether the insurance cost is payed by the public or private sector.
Costs would likely be lower in the public sector thus removing the "first approximation". But there will be administrative overhead in both public and private sector.
3
"Unite for America": Catchy slogan!
2
The funniest aspect to me is those who call themselves Trump defenders.
His actions throughout his miserable business failures, his iniquitous infidelities and his political paradoxes are indefensible.
So, their more accurate name should be Trump deflectors, or Trump distorters, or Trump distractors.
And any success that they might have imagined for themselves is dependent of the absolute otherworldly gullibility of the Trump tribesmen or women.
11
We are already paying more than enough to fund Medicare for all, Mr. Suderman. We're just not getting it.
17
Yes, of course there is some hypocrisy here, but also an important difference. Conservatives see the deficit as a spending problem. Liberals see the deficit as a result of insufficient taxation. One can easily reconcile the notion of much lower taxes and a balanced budget by slashing spending. On the flip side, if the government financed all the programs that liberals would like to see (health care for all, free college, UBI, etc.), the level of taxation required to pay for that would be overwhelming, probably well beyond our capacity to pay.
3
My grandparents did very well financially in their lifetime and managed to live quite well and leave a nice tidy sum to the remaining generations, and they were in the 80% percentile in taxation in their day. We can afford a lot more collectively. You need to catch up on your history lessons.
8
@Tim Lewis. If the US didn’t spent such a disproportionate amount on its military, I might agree with you. But the reality is that we don’t need to raise taxes fix our healthcare system, shore up Public pensions and Social Security, improve education, and expand our social safety net. All we need is a relatively modest cut to our military spending. 10% probably. Maybe 15% - and we’d free up $52b to $77b a year.
.
Republicans like to compare the Federal Budget to a household budget. If you do that then the US really looks like the kind of household where dad has a $70,000 truck but won’t pay for his kids braces.
1
Full on socialism will never work in America unless the country were to split in two, or three, and each unit then pursued its own proclivities. It is not too much to say that socialism is un-American in the deepest and broadest sense.
We are a nation built on hard labor, both originally of slaves and the free and, since that period, on the backs of working men and women were were willing to throw their bodies into heavy tasks to earn a place in their communities and nation. We don't believe in the idea that one is born and, therefore, the path is made, wide and clear. Where we err, and we surely do, is in "get out and make something of yourself", the idea of fighting to find a place and a way in life.
"Everything essential provided" is a path to fall into the sleepy trap of Europe where people work 42 or so weeks a year, many retire in their 50s and then coast for thirty or so years.
There's another bouncing gigantic problem with the socialist dream: lots of people are wedded to the idea that, because they and their children "make it", they are better than others. They like the fighting and even some of the stark fear that exists in a society where little is guaranteed except what parents can provide. They see themselves as winners and want to keep that status. So, there have to be losers, too.
We pay billions now for health care and college, but we don't pool our resources. Those who think we ever will are delusional or perhaps 200 yrs. too early.
2
@Doug Terry
"a path to fall into the sleepy trap of Europe where people work 42 or so weeks a year, many retire in their 50s and then coast for thirty or so years."
Yes, that would be horrible. Work harder, harder, harder. Oh, and for less pay.
12
@Marc Kagan
I am not saying that the Euro situation is a bad deal, just that it won't work here. We would also likely lose some of our creative drive and forceful inventiveness.
If most Americans knew how good and easy many in Europe have it, especially government workers, they might wander what is so special about our country and demand something like it for themselves.
@Marc Kagan
I like and enjoy Europe, but despite our problems in comparison, it does seem to me to be a society tied to the past and staid in the present.
This editorial reminds me of a James Carville quote, at least as well as I can remember it: "If we [Democrats] say that 50 plus 50 equals a hundred and four, and [Republicans] say that 50 plus 50 equals a hundred and four thousand, the press says, 'Well, they're both playing with the numbers.'"
Let's stop doing this with progressives' health care proposals, please.
18
Much of the debt during the first Obama administration occurred as a result of the colossal economic collapse in the second George W. Bush administration, which led to huge outlays for the bailouts for financial institutions and auto industry, reduced tax revenues, a sizable increase in costs of the food stamp program, and unemployment compensation costs, plus continued costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars unwisely started by Bush. The tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration also greatly worsened the deficit.
13
@Jeff S. Smith
Agreed. Clearly stated.
Now I have a question for the Democrats. If they couldn’t manage to persistently and successfully make the points you just made so as to defend themselves and President Obama from unfair attacks how will they manage to sell socialism?
1
@Jeff S. Smith Don't forget those unfunded wars!!
3
@Jack: Democrats have been timid about promoting more expansive and helpful programs because they perceived that the country was mainly old & conservative. But the fact is that the millennial generation, though not as large a cohort as the Baby Boomers, far outstrips in numbers other cohorts such as Gen Xers. They will have more political clout in coming years as the old conservatives die off, & they have been severely shortchanged by older generations. They also interact differently & are not as influenced by media outlets such as Fox, whose viewership is aging. Conservative viewpoints are going to become less relevant, because we have all seen the terrible effects of their policies on average Americans. Increasing numbers of younger people are going to refuse to keep playing the Monopoly game we keep trying to shove down their throats.
Some of us are starting to reconcile ourselves to being poorer & having much less than our parents had, & we are starting to question the values that have brought our country to such a sorry state of affairs. We are more strongly connected to the rest of the world, thanks to global media & travel, & have experienced a better quality of life in other countries. We know that older people are either ignorant or lying when they claim that the US is the best place in the world to live, & we want to emulate countries that really do provide better lives for their citizens, especially when it comes to healthcare, education, & cultural values.
2
The deficit hypocrisy began with Reagan but that cuts too close to his conservatism, is the very heart of it in fact.
4
Running against Trump is a great idea because for most American voters, Trump is at best abrasive, personally repulsive and off putting.
Some Democrats are running on the issue of medicare for all, for which, for many voters, they would need some plan as to how that would work and be financed.
Alternatively, without a specific concrete plan, for many voters medicare for all may be a deterrent to voting Democratic.
Democratic advocacy of Medicare for all without a specific plan may the Republicans' biggest asset at the polls.
The political pendulum swings back and forth and is constant - if it swings wildly one way, then it will swing back forcefully to the other side. This coming election(s) is not any different.
Having said that, the right still wants to portray things like Single Payer health care, a living wage, peace (end of wars) expansion of Social Security and a true Progressive tax system (where if you make more money that you pay more tax back into society - not less) as radical extremism. These issues are squarely in the center, as the political spectrum has been pulled so far right over a couple of generations, that the center is still right in many cases.
There are candidates that are advocating fearlessly for the policies above and are being elected in primaries and special elections. These are now the bread and butter issues of most Americans. Those Progressive policies that have consistently polled popular are now translating into the America that is decisively Socialist.
Bring on the blue wave.
6
Money is the physical symbol of a debt - it’s a concept. That debt is owed by the military protector/force of a given geographical area. The trust in that bill being paid is the same trust held in the force that controls that land property. Hence nationstates.
US Debt doesn’t matter one heck if the dollar remains the international standard and US doesn’t retreat from its Imperial stance militarily.
McConnell and Ryan are masters of manipulating national political conversations to fuel money into the upper class - no matter what. It’s all amoral maneuvering.
But, at the end of the day, it’s the CIA and the endless war adventures that enable the government to use money (really credit) however it chooses.
It’s up to the individual to decide if nation states have higher moral value. If they can create value without dominating neighbors.
1
I think that it is remarkable that the right only attacks ideas as "Socialist" when they start directly benefiting people - as opposed to the types of corporate welfare that they endorse all of the time (not to mention tax breaks for the rich...).
If you look at Energy subsidies ($600 billion) or agriculture subsidies ($26 billion) - most of these go towards the profits of large companies and not to consumers or "mom and pop farmers" - these are emblematic of things the right LOVE and that have gone on for years.
But, if we do it for healthcare, so that the average person can afford access: it's the evil Socialism, that must be stopped at all costs...
I am so ready to see every Republicans voted out of office this November.
11
Yes, embrace socialism, health care for all, and all the other disastrous economic schemes that kept us economically stunted for the last 8 years. I'm sure the American people will award you higher office for that kind of intelligent strategizing and keep a fairly popular President with a surging economy from winning another 4 years. I'll even chip in a donation for political ads if you promise to promote this.
1
Essentially, both parties do not mind the deficit. It's just that the Republicans are channeling the spending towards a few rich families, while the Democrats try to evenly spread the spending over a large group of not-so affluent households.
17
And the hypocrisy
1
Peter: glaring error. Single payer saves money, around 5% of GDP if we follow best practices of first world nations.
10
The carbon tax is imperative, along with cutting multi-billion dollar subsidies to the fossil fuel industry. As much as we push competition, the fallout from climate change will force people to compete in ways we really don’t want to inflict on our descendants.
17
Social democracy is “expensive” only if you ignore social costs. We all pay for those social costs, but those costs are somewhat hidden. Universal health insurance, for example, is expensive, but as a society we’re now paying for the poor health of those who do not have proper medical care.
11
The reality is that the "social Democrats" or "progressives" are nearly as great a threat to the nation as the demrented Trump administration. For two reasons: first their agenda is totally unworkable and would self-destruct if enacted. Secondly, their politics are unacceptable to a large proportion of the spectrum of voters needed to eject Trump and the alt-right from DC. To do so will require overturning Congressional majorities in November, castrating the administration and, if he unfortunately survives that long, defeating Trump in 2020. The votes of former Republicans, independents of all stripes and conservative and moderate Democrats will all be needed but the Liz/Bernie OAC agenda will drive many of them away. So in the end, the "progressives" aid and abet the extreme right.
2
I am sure this has been proposed before. Why not start by lowering the Medicare age to 60. Then in sequence 55 then 50. Within 5 years or so everyone 50 and up is covered. Then the ACA pool is much younger, healthier and cheaper to insure. The cost could be mitigated by an increase in Medicare tax currently ay at 1.45 % and a tax on securities transactions .If thats not enough? Build a few less bombs.
10
The intention of the right-wing is to saddle the country with so much debt and deficit that it will be impossible for the Democrats to spend anything more on entitlement programs or anything else that will really help the people or the country.
20
I read twice the opinion piece and found there is nothing about churches or universities. But, I will go ahead to write on, in catching the concept - hypocrisy. 1) Universities: I truly think universities say clearly about their employment policy for tenure tracks as preferring post-docs with young children. Otherwise, a married post-doc with no child cannot get the logic although and while planning to have children *after* being employed. 2) Churches: I am a convert; so, I’m institutionally a junior Catholic Christian. There are joys and agonies (not in me, but in Churches). Actually and moreover, j and a are often treated as the same. In my part, to ease my sentiments, I blow bubbles to make h fly away.
I’ve been arguing for universal, single-payer healthcare longer than most of today's commenters have been alive.
But I have to ask, "Why now?" Why air these proposals now, when the midterms hang in the balance?
"Abolish ICE," "government-guaranteed jobs," and "free public college" are left-wing proposals certain to enrage the right and motivate them to come out in huge numbers on November 6, creating a red tide that could swamp the blue wave.
Surely, the people that make these proposals must know how counter-productive they are electorally. I can only assume they want the Dems to lose, so they can finally rid themselves of the party’s neoliberal "establishment" and take over the party themselves. From the ashes, Phoenix-like, a new party will be born, they seem to believe. Is it naivety or cynicism? Or a toxic combination of both?
8
@Ron Cohen The sad thing is that you think eliminating a rogue government agency is extreme. The sad thing is that you think "free public college," which was a reality at one point in this country, is extreme.
If human rights and basic education are extreme, and are enough to motivate the "base" of the Republicans more than they are motivation for the Democrats, then the Democrats deserve to lose, and America deserves what happens next.
4
closing in on retirement age now, I've been hearing how the debt and deficit (and many commenters on the subject don't know the difference between the two) were major problems that must be solved now since before I knew the difference between macro and microeconomics. our country has never defaulted on its own currency and the only way it ever could is if our government allowed it to. While yes, we need to approach debt responsibly (whatever that means ), 99 percent of the conversation about can be dismissed as political posturing. what matters is how our elected officials spend that borrowing.
4
At some point, the U.S. political landscape is going to have to grow up: socialism is no derogatory word, it is an idea of how to shape society for a more egalitarian outcome that is in no way, by itself, a threat to most freedoms (save the ill-termed freedom of trade) afforded by a liberal democracy.
It is, and can be, a noble idea(l) that has shaped politics in much of the world and does not deserve outright reproval. As to "free public college, a jobs guarantee, guaranteed family leave", could the author explain where that could lead to "government overreach"? That is, unless you consider the authorities shouldn't care for the well-being, and indeed the welfare, ot their constituents. As far as spending goes, the right is basically bankrupting the country with military spending.
And, while I do not deny that this counter-movement might to some extent be a reaction to the strayings of the Republicans, it is a little outrageaous to imply that both need each other or that socialistic strands of politics in one way or another are pleased with the course things have taken so far at federal level. They basically despise the guy, his croonies and his brand of measures thats runs counter everything they believe in.
So please, show a little respect (and intellectual honesty).
4
Interesting argument there, but it begs the question. Do deficits matter? Clearly not to Republicans. Arguably not to Democrats. Looking at the economy, they don't seem to matter to it either. So why do they mater?
2
Any honest American knows that Republicans are financial and fiscal terrorists who destroy anything they can get their greedy paws on.
More importantly, I would like to correct one of Peter Suderman's deeply misleading sentences:
"Although Mr. Obama presided over some of the nation’s highest deficits during his first term and added trillions to the total national debt, the deficit did eventually come down."
That sentence should read as follows:
"Mr. Obama inherited a once-every-75-year Great Depression event from Bush-Cheney and a Confederacy of Republican Tax-Cut-Deregulatory Dunces which caused federal revenues to plunge from 2009 - 2012 which led to some of the nation's highest deficits while Mr. Obama was President."
Republican pyromaniacs don't give a damn about anything except tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations.
They are the party of 1% welfare and have been so since at least 1980.
They don't give damn about public education, health, infrastructure, science, technology, modernity, voting rights, the environment, democracy or anything else that sustains a healthy society.
They are Russian-Republican nihilists whose job is to feather the oligarch class....with plenty of white spite, Christian Shariah Law, guns and bullets, and bread and circuses for the peasant class.
Their leader is a Matryushka-Doll-In-Chief who is intellectually, morally and economically bankrupt...and they adore him.
Welcome to the Republican Mental Hospital.
5
America's deficit was controlled by the super rich who wanted more money in their tax havens - the question is why?
Why have more money?
For what purpose?
Democracy works when people have a say in its functioning,
and the wages that people earn is a language of democracy when it is used to enhance life.
The rich are just too rich - and way out of the imagination of everyday people who can't understand the massive amounts of money that the rich seems to need to live a life on Earth.
Can't take money with you in the grave.
11
I think they just love money for its own sake. Greed trumps all. That's what defines them.
3
Blue-sky? FDR's second bill of rights is hardly blue sky. Unless you think defeating fascism was blue-sky.
By the way, what's the market price for fixing a broken arm? Since we're supposed to shop around in a capitalist marketplace, where precisely are the hospital's prices? And when my daughter breaks her arm, how much shopping should a responsible consumer expect to do? Just so I can tell her.
You see, health care isn't a marketplace, and prices aren't regulated by consumers. Doctors and hospitals charge absolutely whatever they want, and insurers deliver the bad news. So you've stopped lying about conservative's concern for deficits or the debt. Now stop lying about how health care works and we can bring down the price of delivering care just regulating prices and training doctors.
11
The headline of Mr. Suderman's article refers to social democrats. The article itself refers to democratic socialists. At some point, we are going to have to clearly delineate differences between the two.
An historical look back reveals that over time social democrats abandoned their more egalitarian impulses. Moreover, new immigration is fueling nationalist movements to tighten borders and reduce social generosity. In fact, social democracy and the more attenuated welfare liberalism of the United States have been in retreat for decades. The trend in social democratic countries is towards center-right governments that chip away at the “cradle to grave” features of the welfare state.
By no means is the future of social democracy settled.
Democratic socialists retain the historical perspective that the key to democracy is equality. They believe that redistribution of wealth to promote equality is necessary. They also favor public rather than private control, not to mention support for workplace democracy.
In sum, social democrats pursue "reformist reform"
that subordinates objectives to capitalist needs, criteria, and rationale. In contrast, democratic socialists pursue "radical reform" intended to modify power relations and initiate structural changes in order to weaken capital in favor of workers.
3
Do you favor higher payroll taxes?
3
@Ed - YES, but with a higher maximum rate (more progressive). It should be back to 50%, the rate Reagan LOWERED it to. It was 70% before that.
I also think that taxes on UN-earned income (dividends, etc.) should be higher than payroll taxes. People who WORK for a living, instead of living off dividends and trust fund income should not be punished with higher rates.
Regarding how taxes intersect with healthcare costs, I think we should be moving towards a single-payer system. And the basis, the starting point, should be that employers and employees pay the same as they currently do, but instead of paying it to private health insurance companies it becomes a payroll deduction, like Social Security, going into the national health insurance system. With this as a starting point, people and businesses would see no net change in their current expenses. Hopefully, with good administration, the economy of scale (a huge insurance pool), and tighter control on actual medical costs, we would eventually see savings. Other countries manage to have healthcare costs a much smaller part of their economy. We should be able to as well.
7
@Ed: Depends on what you get in return. If those payroll taxes are less than what you'd pay individually for health insurance, college, income security at job loss, nursing home, etc., that would be a gain for you. Unless you think you don't need health insurance, a college education, income security and a nursing home ever in your own life, your parents lives or your children's lives.
6
OK--and how does Charles Koch feel about this hypocrisy? Glad to see an acknowledgment from Mr. Suderman of Republican hypocrisy, but waiting on some action from Mr. Koch and/or Senators Flake, Corker, and other Republican Senators who actually have some power, right now, to put a check on the impending trillion dollar annual budget deficit--and beyond that, this Republican president's anti-conservative, anti-freedom, pro-authoritarian shovelware.
17
@K. Swain -- What I really want to see is Flake, Corker, McCain or some of the other Senators Trump has slammed, insulted, demeaned and belittled stick it right back to him and torpedo Kavanaugh. And explain exactly why. Tell Trump to his face that his words and his execrable morals have disgusted the world, and earned him a payback from someone who can fight back. I would so love to see this happen... c'mon McCain - put country ahead of politics.
1
Republican politicians won’t care about the hypocrisy. They concocted rationale for a “Do as I say, not as I do” method of governance long ago. Those few remaining Republican politicians who genuinely worry about the deficit and the debt have been cowed into submission. They aren’t about to speak out and get themselves ousted by a conservative voting bloc that has swallowed the aforementioned rationale hook, line, and sinker. The orthodoxy of conservative fiscal policy is a thoroughly transparent fabrication. Conformity with this fabrication is enforced zealously. Contrary data is not only not allowed; it is scornfully rejected as evidence of liberal skullduggery.
15
All I can say is the utopean values are great but sad it will only pull down the Dems yet another time in 2020 .
2016 was the wrong person . 2020 is wrong cause.who knows.. like it now. Effect Donald stands to be president for 8 years with both Russian and extreme right and left support! Cannot even think the eternal sadness it brings.!
2
We are “tax and spend” liberals, they are “spend and spend” conservatives.
32
@Dundeemundee More like "borrow and spend" anarchists. I don't see any fiscal conservatism in this Republican party. The only part of "conservatism" the Republicans are practicing is the "con" part.
1
The GOP lies have a cost. We need to find a civil dialogue, but a central part of a real centrist dialogue is embracing facts and truth. The GOP has spent decades lying about the whys of what they do. No, Dick Cheney said it. They do not care about deficits. The truth? They do not like helping poor Americans and they really do not like helping poor not-white Americans. It's racial sadism that drives them, not economics. MLK closed the door on open white hate. I say this over and over. I am an old man. I don't expect much help, but if we are serious about spending, not investing in children costs more in the long run. You don't get that minority kid a good education and good opportunities. You rush to throw him in jail. We all lose. We all pay. When a tad of decency and crushing this sadistic impulse saves billions of tax dollars in the long run. A good education for all of America's children should not be a privilege, but a right, if we are serious about the self-righteous claims we make concerning the greatness of our country.
83
Please stop trying to elevate Cortez as the new leader of a the new democratic party. She has not even been elected to office.
After she wins election she will be a very junior House member who cannot even locate her office without assistance. Of course she is currently making errors. She has not even gotten her feet planted on the ground.
Let's start by winning a few elections. We all know what happened the last time we had a premature coronation.
22
Regarding health care costs: It will only work if it is a SINGLE PAYER NOT FOR PROFIT SYSTEM.
That is the only way to make health care AFFORDABLE.
Barack Obama"s intentiins admirable, but musguieded. Intended of tryin to creature insurance protocols to make health insurance AFFORDABLE, he should have device mechanisms to bring down the exhorbinant costs of services. Doing that will make insurance AFFORDABLE to all.
8
It would be more honest to say: To be a republican is to worship mammon with all of ones heart and soul and nothing else comes in any higher than 5th place.
They are the exact same people who FDR was pointing at and fighting with when he fixed the mess they made of the nation in 1929. Wasting every improvement made in science and industry from the late 19th century until then on masturbatory self indulgence and virtue signaling. Not unlike today.
The only real difference is that today they have, now being wise to the effectiveness of education mitigated the effect of reality on the masses with an active campaign of distorting reality through propaganda and defunding/watering down standards for education for several decades. This has had the effect of fooling many in the masses that they are not seeing what they see and hearing what they hear.
The correct response is to go back to sane government and regulation that acknowledges that a millionaire is not equal to a working woman because that amount of money gives them the ability to access every part of our society more effectively and successfully.
Alan Greenspan's calculated evil lies will rank high on the lists of destructive propaganda in future histories of this time. How his wife still has a job as a journalist is beyond me. Any real journalist would have exposed him for what he is without hesitation. I guess we are back to mammon then huh?
10
It's important to note that President Obama inherited the tab for G.W.'s wars.
47
Republicans are opposed to democratic socialism. But Republicans love national socialism. The issue for Republicans has never been socialism: it's who benefits from it.
41
@Adam For anyone who is not sure of the difference between these systems: "Democratic socialism" is what the Scandinavian countries have. "National socialism" is what Nazi Germany had - a particularly virulent form of fascism.
I'm afraid Mr. Suderman is simply wrong. He chooses one item from the Republican agenda, deficits and uses that to bolster and entire socialist agenda. This is exactly the kind of wishful thinking that the hard left would like to believe. In fact, the average American wants lower taxes, doesnt want to be on the dole or identified as a beneficiary of government handouts, and has seen the failure of government controlled and operated programs for generations. If unseating Trump is the objective, Blue Dogs win, Socialists lose. Were I a skeptic... Mr Suderman is the editor of a libertarian 501c3 which had one of the Koch brothers as a board member.
1
I don't know Americans love social security and Medicare. Both programs run by the Government.
4
@Chris I don't want lower taxes; I want better services from the taxes that I pay. Currently my taxes mostly go to subsidize rich people and their corporations that gouge me, and a military that spends most of its money protecting foreign territories and propping up overseas dictatorial oil barons. With the tax dollars we poured into the sands of Iraq, and the American blood that was spilled there, we could have re-built our electrical grid, or fixed countless disintegrating bridges here at home. I'd be thrilled to pay even more taxes if I knew those taxes were providing health care for all of us, giving all Americans an opportunity to be well educated without incurring personal debt, providing opportunities for job training for young people and mid-career folks who've been laid off, and providing opportunities to earn a living wage and find adequate and affordable housing for all Americans. I want the government to address the basic needs of us all, and only once they've done that, then they can spend on tax cuts, military, etc. Americans hate paying taxes because we get very little back from them. Change our priorities.
5
@Chris
I'm curious what article you read. The central point wasn't about what voters wants ... if that was the case the GOP would be voted out of office.
The point of the article is the hypocrisy of the GOP which has self-declared for fiscal modesty and limited government. Yet it just gave $12B away to farmers in a classic case of corporate welfare ( don't pretend to tell me those were family farms at stake ); and will run some of the biggest budget deficits ever.
Oh yeah, unseating Trump is the objective because once again, a GOP president only paid lip service to fiscal conservatism as a campaign moniker then did the exact opposite. Oh did you see what the deficits will be under Trump?
2
Democratic Party leaders are wrong to hail socialist newbies like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Cynthia Nixon as the future of our party. Ms. O-C, Ms. Nixon and other Democratic Socialists will achieve no more than sporadic wins, and may cost us many seats in the mid-terms and 2020. (Remember Bernie in 2016.)
On July 10 Cynthia Nixon told Politico she is a Democratic Socialist (as is Alexandra O-C). The goals of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) won't appeal to most Democrats or any Republicans; two of many examples: (https://www.dsausa.org/where_we_stand#global )
1. "...direct ownership and/or control of much of the economic resources of society by the great majority of wage and income earners." This is plain old Marxism/Communism, where workers own/control the means of production; it hasn't worked elsewhere and won't appeal to US voters.
2. "...massive redistribution of income from corporations and the wealthy to wage earners and the poor and the public sector, in order to provide the main source of new funds for social programs, income maintenance and infrastructure rehabilitation...." For example, Medicare for All is projected to cost $3 trillion (!) per year. As Margaret Thatcher so aptly put it, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Abolishing ICE, increasing taxes and turning the means of production over to workers are suicidal platform planks for the Democratic Party.
5
And? What is wrong
with that?
3
Ray,
Capitalism as practiced currently in America needs a reset. Can we all agree with that?
How shall we go about it? Without all he scary dog whistles and buzz words please.
As for your $3 trillion MFA cost,(!!! gasp!!!!faint!!!) we as a nation are already paying over that. For healthcare we can't access or use. Not counting the 30 million Americans that don't have HC at all. The average American spent $9,596 last year for healthcare their afraid to use.
MFA includes vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments. As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card. No more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges.
MFA. Cheaper, better, for everyone. Just as Trump promised.
By the by, When Union busting Margaret died, street parties erupted. When her hearse was paraded, she drew as many jeers as cheers. The hoi polloi didn't exactly like the Iron Lady. England's Reagan.
Suicide is continuing the Democratic status quo. You and I know that campaign plan lost to the worst candidate in modern history.
The pendulum is swing back, where you going to stand?!
https://live-berniesanders-com.pantheonsite.io/issues/medicare-for-all/
2
Today's repugnican is interested only in holding onto power, keeping Amerika white and racist, and lining their own pockets. Even Koch has realized this can't last or work.
10
If republicans are truly conservative, they will stop and give back all monies from social security, medicare, and medical benefits.What happened to their economic conservatism, we now have a trillion dollar national debt. Oh, for the bad old days of Clinton, that loser, you know the president who wiped out our national debt.
19
We know exactly what will happen if Democrats try to restore or expand the social safety net when they are next in control. In among the howling about deficits and irresponsibility erupting from Republicans there will be unending obstruction and filibuster. And any cries of hypocrisy will be ignored. And media outlets like the New York Times will be demanding that Democrats reach out to Republicans and build bipartisan coalitions. It happens every time. And spineless corporate Democrats like Chuck Schumer will dutifully play along.
15
I have a solution. Arrest and jail without bail every member of the GOP.
Within 24 hours every problem this nation has will disappear or become so small locals will be able to handle it.
7
@magicisnotreal- I assume you are only semi-serious but the sentiment you express is embraced by many of the new left. Your allegations of fascism are so ironic. Have you ever heard of self-awareness?
2
@Tim Lewis
Quiet, Tim. Comrade magic is revealing what many on the left think should happen to those who disagree with the Party line.
The US has Socialism for the 1%. Thanks to the GOP.
50
Republicans are borrowing from America's future to enrich the .1% today. The labor of future generations will be devoted to paying off the mortgage that the Republicans are taking out for the benefit of their wealthy political donors.
If the Democratic Socialists are proposing deficit spending to improve the health and education of the middle and lower classes, their fiscal sins are no more heinous than those of the Republicans. At least the benefits would be broadly shared, instead enriching already bloated billionaires.
19
Like all of Trump's schemes the 12 billion dollar bailout for farmers (which is really a bail out for him) is crooked poker to its very core. Even if such a manoeuvre could be pulled off in spite of zero compensation for similarly damaged victims of Trump's trade wars, the twelve billion itself is in direct violation to the WTO understanding any government subsidy big enough to turn the playing field on its end cannot be allowed to stand.
13
Oh, so that's why trump and his cabinet of crooks want to withdraw from the WTO.
3
Democrats are like the little brother who can always be conned and hoodwinked by the older brother. If Republicans say the deficit is terrible, Democrats feel guilty and try not to spend money. If Republicans say Nancy Pelosi is evil, Democrats think they have to disavow her. It is easy to make Democrats feel guilty. But Republicans can happily sell out their own grandmothers for a dime and never feel remorse.
38
@MadelineConant- are you, with a straight face, claiming that liberals are virtuous?
1
@Tim Lewis
No, my point was that Democrats are more gullible than Republicans. But, in point of fact, they are also more humanitarian and less greedy.
The infuriating aspect about this GOP and Trump Administration that the next time the Dems are in control, Republicans will once again go crazy about national debt and blame the Democrats for it. They did it last time w Obama and they'll do it next, probably much louder and obnoxiously.
23
Social Democrats and Democratic Socialists are NOT the same thing. How can even the NYT confuse this? Social Democrat think FDR and Denmark. Democratic Socialist think Marx. Just read the DSA website.
7
@PDS - You might also read Das Kapital so you can distinguish socialism from communism.
4
I think it's basically the difference between "you keep more of your own" (the GOP message), and "we'll take from them, and give more to you" (the Democratic Socialist message).
In theory, neither has to result in debt. But in practice, taking enough or letting people keep even more is pretty hard to do, so debt follows either way.
But as someone who is in the bottom 60%, I definitely am personally looking forward to socialism, and the joy it will bring me when those in the top 30% are being massively taxed! Because right now, things are mega-unfair!
School debt is unmanageable, rent is high, medicine is expensive, and a host of health and employment problems due to systemic racism have definitely turned me into a full blown Socialist!
And with nationalizing healthcare, we could also make nurses, doctors, and healthcare professionals earn salaries more in line with what social workers and teachers are making! The salaries these people make - anywhere from 60-175K is simply Highway Robbery! It needs to end, and We the People need to bring these healthcare snobs down a peg or two!
5
@Trans Cat Mom federal debt is the way new money needed for a growing economy gets into the privare sector. No deficit => no new money => depression. Happens every time.
2
@Trans Cat Mom
I think you have it backwards -- we need to pay teachers and social workers the same as healthcare professionals. The U.K. NHS is having a nursing crisis because of low pay and too few new people entering the profession.
"Bring these ...snobs down " smacks of mob rule.
1
@Trans Cat Mom
Sorry to burst your unfairness fantasy bubble, but the top 30% are already "massively taxed". Accoring to CBO data for 2013, the top 40% of American households paid 86% of all personal federal taxes, including payroll taxes. The top 20% paid 69% of all taxes. Extrapolating, the top 30% paid about 80% of the tax bill.
In other words, the "rich" already pay most of the bill. I guess you want them to pay even more.
I worry that any flavor of democracy will fail when a small minority pays for the rest.
Sadly, the country is full of people who believe Ocasio Cortez's rhetoric and have absolutely no grasp of economics.
4
@Ernest Montague - and you do? Here is a lesson:
The federal government does not pay for government operations with your tax money. Just ask yourself where the money you use to pay your taxes came from in the first place. You will see you are putting the cart before the horse.
The government does not need your money. It can create (thru the FED) create as much money as it needs. It will run out of dollars the day after the NFL runs out of points.
But there's a catch. If the government decides to create too much money, all that money may cause excessive inflation. You know, too much money chasing not enough stuff. Here's where taxes come in. The purpose of taxes is to adjust the amount of money in the economy to prevent too much inflation.
But think about this. While more money in the economy may raise prices, if we produce more stuff, goods and services, that will LOWER prices. So the trick is for the government to spend the money it creates to facilitate the production of stuff. The means getting the money to the people who need it and will spend it thus encouraging businesses to make more stuff, not to the people who do not need it and will use it to speculate.
The fact that doing things that help people turns out to be good for the economy makes me wonder if there may be a God after all.
7
Ernest,
Maybe not.
But they do know that they pay $10,000. a yr. for healthcare they cant use or access. Few people enjoy or understand the why's and how's of insurance and healthcare.
Nobody likes attempting to call for pre-authorization. Only to be turned down.
Nobody likes to dig for co-pays and premiums.
Nobody likes being billed for months afterwards and trying to fight with middlemen to have them pay or attempt to pay for said services. Bills we don't even understand.
The list goes on.
Healthcare as practiced in America isn't working for the majority.
If you have the answers, what do you suggest?
4
I've seen and heard a lot from and about Ocasio-Cortez. She is articulate and clearly has guts. But she is a very young woman. She might consider the discipline of cleaving to well traveled economics advisor and listen, listen, listen. There are plenty of them and I am sure they would love to help. Spend a few weekends with Elizabeth Warren, she is an expert on this stuff.
1
@Brian Prioleau, Stephanie Kelton would be good and she is right on Long Island and accessible. For a sample read
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/deficit-tax-cuts-trump.html
3
Social Democrats want to stop exposing deficits, want to grow markets instead of barriers to trade, want infrastructure not given away to cronies as prizes. We want our soldiers home. We want jobs that provide a living wage. We want a livable planet. These Republicans are bottom feeders, you have the cabinet and president that chases public money-- mercenaries 9Eric Prince), privatizing schools with selective districts (DeVos), bad real estate deals (Trump Kuschner, Ivanka). Equal rights for all, equal under the law is all social democrats are. The Republicans and Trump are vultures, bottom feeders.
13
Republican Hypocrisy. We're two more redundant words ever put together?
14
@Mitchell- how about dishonest liberals?
1
Oh no, our terrible scheme of using candidates that happen to share some of their constituents' values has been revealed!
Before long, we'll be the Republicans again! More re-public, less re-sentiment.
2
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez won a primary because her opponent did a sloppy job and took his victory for granted. There was a puny voter turnout as well. It is hardly a great sign of everything in life about to change toward socialism and communism. If she had beaten a Republican in a competitive district that would be worth the hoopla the NYT lavishes on her.
8
The Republican Party has lost all credibility on deficits, and virtually everything else it has claimed to stand for over the years.
Fiscally responsible? Moral? Patriotic? Ha!
The only party that can honestly lay claim to those titles is the Democratic Party.
20
The article's title refers to "Social Democrats", but the article itself is about "Democratic Socialists". I those were horses of different colors!
3
Reasonably simple: privatize the profits and socialize the losses. See.... quick and easy!
Wrong. Debt and deficit are NOT going to inspire anyone to vote one way or another. The topic has been flogged to death over the course of generations. It's boring. The experts have always been wrong. Nobody cares anymore.
Republican hypocrisy is an accepted fact. Trump's insincerity, too. Nobody cares.
And, furthermore, the word "socialist" is poison. Lots of people still care about that. If liberals (like me!) want to see a better direction for the nation a 1930s re-tread is not gonna work.
The Party needs to get alot smarter.
Why not a Medicare buy-in option instead of "single payer"? It could be presented as "competition", which people love. Why not add some states rights thinking to the platform so we don't keep getting dragged down by the "less intelligent" states. (e.g. Amtrak could just go around the states that complain about it! Let the states choose/give them enough rope.)
Why not get rid of the leadership? All of them.
10
@laurence asks "Why not a Medicare buy-in option instead of "single payer"?
Two reasons:
1. It is much cheaper to treat every one the same way.
2. Private insurance companies will find ways to attract younger, healthier, richer people, e.g. gym membership, junk policies with low premiums, etc. Thus Medicare will get the older, sicker, poorer people, and its costs will rise.
4
I think Mr. Suderman underestimates the strength of Republican cognitive dissonance. After Bush Jr. blew up the deficit and set the economy on fire, they spent eight years howling like banshees as President Obama put out the flames despite their best efforts to stop him.
I'm a young man. The first ballot I ever cast was for Obama. I have no experience with a Republican party that does anything other than argue in bad faith.
50
All the hysteria about the term social democracy comes from the histrionics Reagan used in GOP propaganda long before he became president;I remember one from the 50s of a couple running away in the night to find a doctor of their choice for their baby;it was all malarkey then as it was/continues to be about the GOP lies about the ACA;the last good Republican was George Romney,father to twit,yet twit never mentions him;look him up&all the good he did in a by-partisan way;he planned to run for president&no one cared he was born in Mexico;but the evil GOP trump made an issue out of nothing,but the GOP doesn't value people on their moral,intellectual worth, only the color of their skin & their billionaire status;The GOP took money from Russian Oligarchs during the 2016 campaign;read the Dallas Morning News from Dec. 2017 Expose & their continuing updates;the GOP is all in on Russia,they were minions of the Kochs, but not are minions to Putin
5
Wow, astounding! A young woman not even elected to office, Alexandria Ocasio, is now considered by Peter Suderman to be the voice of the future. Wow! Wow! I think the Republicans are panicked and for good reasons. Suderman is right about all of this. For the Republicans, it has never been about actual debt and deficit reduction. It has been about "how to keep the riffraff down and us up." It is a societal struggle for dominance, the "rich" versus the "poor."
19
While I appreciate Mr. Suderman's repudiation of the current GOP's debit cynicism, and while I appreciate that he didn't go so far as to repeat the well-worn myth that "Bill Clinton balanced the budget," he still went too far with this statement:
"After Bill Clinton dramatically shrank both deficits and government spending as a share of the economy..."
In fact, Bill Clinton proposed five budgets, none of which were enacted by Congress.
What put is in the black during his tenure were 1.) an economy on steroids due to the advent of the consumer internet (which Clinton had nothing to do with) which produced gobs of tax revenues;
2.) massive cuts to military spending including base closures due to the end of the Cold War - the ending of which again had nothing to do with Clinton, the bases closures which were pushed by the GOP, and;
3.) the Gingrich congress which created the budget which Clinton claimed "balanced the budget on the backs of the poor."
In fact, regardless of the merits of "HillaryCare," the one significant Clinton-created initiative of his entire 8 years, it would by his own admission have exploded the debt over the first 10 years at least.
Bill Clinton was a good steward of an incredibly lucky hand which history dealt to him. He was not a deficit hawk.
10
@Livonian - Here is what actually happened:
There were economists that predicted 2008 & their argument is easy to understand. The first thing to realize is that the federal deficit measures the flow of money FROM the federal government TO the private sector.
The first chart at http://www.slideshare. net/MitchGreen/mmt-basics-you- cannot-consider-the- deficit-in-isolation shows what happened.
In the 1990's spending & the deficit were reduced. The flow of money out of the federal sector was reduced.
Simultaneously the flow of money into the private sector was reduced. Then in about 1996 money began to flow out of the private sector, out of the country in fact. In about 1998, Money started flowing into the federal sector. This is the Clinton surplus. Money was rapidly flowing out of the private sector.
In 2001, the Bush administration started, & we had deficits again, but our trade deficit was really large. Except for a brief period in 2003, the Bush deficits were not large enough to compensate for the money going out of the country. Money still flowed out of the private sector.
People then turned to banks to get money. Private debt exploded. But the banks could create only so much money.
Finally in 2008, the economy crashes. Now there certainly were other factors which contributed to the 2008 crash, but the cumulative effect of money leaving the private sector from about 1996 to 2008 & the resultant huge increase in private debt was the main cause.
2
@Livonian, Trying to understand your point. Trump has an extremely dynamic economy, just like Clinton, and he's cutting taxes and exploding the deficit. I seem to remember Clinton raising taxes, which 1.) was not supported by republicans, 2.) was not politically popular, and 3.) was not dealt to him by history.
2
@Livonian
I'm not knowledgeable enough to argue the relative contributions among those you list to the balanced budget during the Clinton years. But I'll note that your list omits one item that might be relevant. Clinton RAISED TAXES!! This was done over unanimous Republican opposition and Cassandra's warnings that the modest increase was going to end all economic life as we knew it. At least some of those "gobs" of tax revenues that you mention were a result of the increased rates.
So many upper class entitlements we don’t really need through the tax code. Ax them.
Increase the cap on social security.
Increase the tax on capital gains.
Stop giving huge tax cuts to those who don’t need them.
Cut out all entitlements, including social security and Medicare, to those over a certain income level.
Cut the increased defense spending.
Add agents to the IRS to collect all the back taxes owed them and police the tax havens more vigorously.
Stop subsidizing industries that are making huge profits.
Stop allowing mega-donors to corrupt our electoral system and our legislators.
So many things we can do...to help provide health care, college etc.
But will we even try?
202
@LJB: Not if the GOP remains in power, those are all Democrat ideas.
@LJB
I agree with all of these proposals except for cutting Social Security and Medicare for people above a certain income level. These social insurance programs should not be means tested. To do so would weaken their political support by turning them into "welfare" programs.
6
@LJB Great post LJB.
We should remember community efforts from the past : barn raising, county fairs, neighbors helping neighbors. Here in Maine, uninsured sick people put cans on the counters of neighborhood stores asking for help and people donate.
We can use that spirit for everyone if we want to.
5
@memosyne
Sweet sentiment, but a can of change isn’t going to come close in covering the average surgery or chronic disease, not in America.
4
@memosyne
Dear Memosyne, the charity approach certainly helps those in need and enobles those who give, but for those in need it is no basis for a stable life. Those from the other side, the left bank, if you will, propose that all people have a right to a decent life, independent of anyone’s feelings of generosity, and that we as a society have a duty to provide it. What do you think?
4
The way we, and other nations, pay for infrastructure and health care is to set a corporate tax rate floor, which is approved by all other nations. Individuals nations have the right to raise the rate higher, but it cannot go below the floor, thus discouraging companies from setting up corporate tax haven elsewhere. A similar law would be set up for individuals. Those who offshore money would be turned in to the international authority. Forcing high earners to pay their taxes and corporations to do the same would give all of us much needed income. Those who try to dodge would be financially punished. Removing the Trump tax break and raising taxes on the top 10% of earners, with a millionaire surtax, taking the cap off social security, and reinstating the estate tax will take care of the rest. Bring on Medicare for all, high speed rail, and low cost state and community college. And enact legislation that no war could be declared without a tax increase.
53
Until the US changes how it pays for elections, using more public funding, and limiting private donations like other capitalist democracies, it will stay captive to elite financial interests for crucial services like h/c. We all pay the price.
From True Cost Blog---dates when countries started universal health care—a partial list, with varied systems.
UK 1948 Single Payer
Switzerland 1994 Insurance Mandate
Japan 1938 Single Payer
Sweden 1955 Single Payer
Netherlands 1966 Two-Tier
Australia 1975 Two Tier
Netherlands 1966 Two-Tier
Germany 1941 Insurance Mandate
France 1974 Two-Tier
Norway 1912 Single Payer
Sweden 1955 Single Payer
Austria 1967 Insurance Mandate
Italy 1978 Single Payer
In other democracies it’s acceptable for elected govt to regulate insurance premium costs for their citizens. Here it’s off the table. The pharma ads that constantly flood US TV are banned abroad, since they don't think medicine should be marketed like any consumer product. Here it is a norm.
Our media must interview some citizens abroad and ask them why they won’t change to a US style high profit system that's been sold to American as preserving our ‘freedoms’. Why don’t their insurance/drug companies lobby their parliaments and pay for elections?
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@Len Charlap....
Len, your data is exactly what our media must start discussing. The media hasn’t lived up to its duty to inform voters. It safely conforms to our distorted political norms, set by for profit medical industry donors.
Our op ed page columnists and TV talk panels stay safely centrist and ignore how h/c is financed in dozens of capitalist democracies. And how it benefits millions of their citizens’ lives. Americans are kept in the dark by our famous ‘free press’--- in the age of the internet.
Polls show 59% of voters want Medicare for All. This % should increase as more Democrats break from past norms and start pushing it. What works against it is our political credo that govt itself is bad, and must be kept small---the better to keep profits flowing.
@Meredith - It would be nice if our media started discussing any policy at all instead of tweets, corruption, and eMails.
@Meredith - Thanks Meredith - In simple English, my USA is a backward country no longer deserving of tags such as world leader, most advanced country.
I wrote yesterday in my most dystopic state of mind that I think the USA would have to experience something as terrible as Sweden's great famine 1867-1869 to finally be driven to adopt policies standard in more advanced countries. That great famine was driven by three years of extreme climatic effects, then simply natural variation, not driven by human actions. The short-term solution became for Swedes to flee to America as did both sides of my family one from the north and one from the south beginning at the end of that period.
You make an important suggestion that the Times so far will not consider. Come to Europe and ask people in the far-right parties if they would like their country to become more like America, no UHC, no renewable energy, no parental leave etc. You and I know the answer but Republicans probably do not.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
O
3
If the Democrats want to advance their agenda, they're gonna have to do the same thing. Pass Medicare for all regardless of cost and then Republicans won't be able to cut taxes and increase defense spending when they're in power. That simple.
69
@J Estevao To do that you have to win elections. Good luck convincing the "Social Democrats" that winning is better than losing. They have no interest in the compromises required to win at the ballot box.
2
1. cut the military budget from $660B per year to $400B
2. Tax dividends and other non-wage income at higher rates than wage-based income.
3. Increase the progressiveness of the income tax and raise the highest rate to at least 50%. (Reagan LOWERED it to 50% from 70%)
4. Use the surplus to rebuild infrastructure (jobs and efficient/competitive business) and fund education (the future of our global competitiveness).
5. Institute a single-payer health system that is based on current costs paid by employers and employees, but with the payments being a payroll deduction to the national insurance system.
6. Reduce the national debt. We are 10 years into an economic expansion. If we don't start paying down debt now we will never do it.
142
@J Jencks Here is what has happened EVERY time we did 6.
The federal government has balanced the budget, eliminated deficits for more than three years, and paid down the debt more than 10% in just six periods since 1776, bringing in enough revenue to cover all of its spending during 1817-21, 1823-36, 1852-57, 1867-73, 1880-93, and 1920-30. The debt was paid down 29%. 100%, 59%, 27%, 57%, and 38% respectively. A depression began in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929.
Do you like depressions?
4
@Len Charlap - If there IS a causative relationship between reducing the national debt and depressions, then by all means we shouldn't do it. I'm not an economist. But at this point I'm not convinced there is a causative relationship.
At a "gut level", for what that's worth, a constantly growing national debt, even in times of economic surplus, doesn't seem to me to be sustainable. It seems to me that at times like this we should be stashing funds away to carry us through the next recession or depression. We need to be preparing for the future, so that we can borrow when we need it most.
We lose all wars. Cut the military budget. Our military is next to useless.
1
In our conversations about health care and the deficit and the great challenge that we face in expanding health care to Americans presently without, I never hear that national health care may actually SAVE us money. What? How could that be?
Well, since we pay far more for health care than everyone else in the civilized world, it is not unreasonable to think we could follow paths they have already blazed to improve. We spend over 17% of GDP on health care; other nations spend, in some cases, less than 10%. They cover everybody, and have FAR better outcomes, and pay less.
So we should not be afraid that healthcare will bankrupt us, and start demanding our legislators get us even with the world, starting now, and tell us how they plan to use the windfall from simply being no worse than the rest of the world.
See, the future does not have to be terrifying.
52
Taxes rise to pay for care but premiums disappear. It's win win except for the medical industrial complex.
5
"To be a Republican is to oppose socialism. That opposition is practically encoded in the party's DNA.". Except that DNA has mutated into another beast entirely. Republican hypocrisy is nothing new but the extent to which this party has contradicted, abandoned and reversed all previous iterations of the "Republican" party is head spinning. This was the Family Values party, the Law and Order party, the regular order party. We know their stands on taxes and abortion don't change but everything else is still up for grabs as far as I can see. Sound judgment, serious attempts at governing, decorum, diplomacy, strong international relations, free markets, all have been made irrelevant because of one con man they just can't separate from. If Trump were to come out tomorrow and declare he is a Republican/Socialist as proved with farm subsidies and increases in military spending. At that point the whole dynamic in the Republican party would shift. If he can get his followers to like Putin, he can get them to like Socialism. Once again, the party would mutate into another beast entirely. But they always remain beastly.
32
Read this Mark Meadows ! As my Dad used to say "It is what you do not what you say." I know Meadows is still all about the debt but he see it as a way to kill Medicare and Social Security which are Earned Benefits, not entitlements. I just love living in Meadows gerrymandered district here in western NC.
12
Medicare payroll deductions, co-insurance and monthly premiums only cover about 60% of the programs costs. The typical SS recipient will collect back their contribution within approximately four years of getting benefits.
3
@From Where I Sit Great I have to live to be in my 90's to get mine back. So what? I am OK with that because we are all in this together. How many SS payees die before getting one cent. My younger brother did. It is what we call insurance. How much have you paid in auto insurance and never had a claim - but if you did have a claim I paid for you - because I haven't had a claim in 25 years. That is how it works.
As i said we are all in this together.
@deBlacksmith "as a way to kill Medicare and Social Security, which are earned benefits, not entitlements."
I shake my head, not because the words above make no sense, but because they appear in these comments so frequently. SS and Medicare are entitlements precisely BECAUSE their beneficiaries have EARNED them. Why is that so hard for people to understand? It's the Republicans who believe that even though we have earned them we are somehow not entitled to them. Stop spreading GOP propaganda!
2
Um, so? There is nothing wrong with cynicism...it is probably the most rational approach to achieving policy goals. Using the impact of tax increases to prevent new entitlements from being enacted is an incredibly effective way of hemming in government bloat.
The reality is the money, $3 trillion per year according to the Wall Street Journal today, is not there for Medicare for All without significantly cutting back on the quality of care received by people who have insurance now. I will adamantly oppose any reduction in the quality of the medical care I receive to allow the uninsured to receive coverage. I also will oppose paying more taxes for it, even if it means voting for unsavory types like Trump.
These Democratic Socialists are a boon for the Republicans, because they are such an embodiment of the tax-and-spend Liberal. People might like their policies in theory, but once they find out those paying the extra taxes are them and not "The Rich", support for such government programs drops fast.
8
@QED - Who do you think pays for the ER bills for the uninsured? Guess that that does to your health insurance bill? You're already paying for this problem.
Medical bills have been the leading cause of bankruptcy in the U.S. and that weakens the economy for everyone.
Your desire for a permanent underclass to look down on is self defeating.
48
@QED the fall back is always the tax and spend liberal....yet I would counter after 40+ years of observation and facts one could call Republicans the "cut taxes and spend anyway" party. When have deficits gone down under a Republican administration? At least tax and spend is more responsible. Deficits left by their Republican predecessors have been reduced under the last two Democratic Presidents, Clinton and Obama. The deficits have blown through the roof under Reagan, Bush, Bush II and now Trump.
A big difference is the democrats try to give us something for our money and try to pay for it, where as the Republicans just want to to take away from those who need it and give to the rich or military.
261
The ER problem could be solved by repeal of the 1986 law that required it. It’s actually that simple.
1
Mr Suderman seems to be carried away by people who aren't even Democrats seeming to speak for the Democratic Party. Both Ms Cortez and Mr Sanders are Democratic Socialists, not Democrats, and if their web-site is to be believed, are full-throated proponents of socialism. Have they forgotten that socialism is a failed experiment, and has been jettisoned for a reason?
And Ms Cortez is not the poster-child for the Democrats. What she espouses might play well in her district, and in other very liberal districts, but not in the places Democrats to need to flip if we are to have a chance of taking back the House. People like Conor Lamb and Doug Jones are the ones who will give us a majority in the House and Senate, respectively, not Mr Sanders and his ilk.
The GOP's hypocrisy on deficits & debt goes back at least to the Reagan administration. It's actually a symptom of a more general problem; their belief that the rules don't apply to them.
10
@Danny
Medicare for all is not "socialism." The government pays the bills but the care is entirely provided by the private sector.
The V.A. is socialized medicine where the government owns the hospitals and employs the doctors and nurses. Medicare is not.
27
@Danny,
Our country already has many programs that could accurately be called "socialist" and people are happy with them. We call them public schools, public parks, public libraries, public police and fire protection, social security, and medicare/medicaid. None of these are "failing" and they all part of the Commonwealth, as we call it in Massachusetts. None of these involve the means of production, but they are all socialist arrangements.
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@Danny why do you say that socialism is a failed experiment? Most of Europe begs to differ with you, together with Americans who have visited and quite reasonably envy those nations.
6
"That Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s brand of expansive, expensive socialism has found this moment so conducive to its popularity is no accident."
Overall, the article is fine, but writing this, in this fashion, gives credence to a particularly wrong-headed view.
Expensive? Compared to what? Under what assumptions? Even the Kochs' own report makes the case (inadvertently) that government funded healthcare is cheaper – by a lot.
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Ok, but what about the Democrats' hypocrisy and dishonesty. At least this writer, uniquely and much to his credit, acknowledges how eager Obama was to stab seniors in the back and cut SS. In fact, he tried REPEATEDLY to do just that. Democrats, in their cultlike worship of Obama consistently refuse to recognize this fact. I do agree that Trump's tax, or should I say, lack of tax revenue, plan is very concerning, and the Republicans haven't been forthcoming about its potential dangers. But I'm not sure today's Democrats are much more responsible, since they don't seem to want to exactly explain how their new benefits will be funded.
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@me Presidents don't control SS. You're "what about Obama" screed is deeply misinformed. SS is figured by the rate of inflation. They ask why we just can't talk to the other side. Because the other side has no facts, just stuff FOX told them.
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@me
Regarding Obama threatening SS......cite some references please. Thanks.
6
@me Please give specific details on these attempts by Obama to "stab seniors in the back"--especially compared to the Republican agenda which is to eliminate SS entirely (using the deficit as a rationale). What about, what about, what about ... is all I am hearing from Republicans, which just shows that you have no defense for your Party's actions.
5
Frankly, after the depressing 2016 presidential campaign, we really didn't need much more reason to start working for meaningful change, in our party. Our Criminal-in-Chief, and the greedy, nefarious Republicrooks, have finally enervated formerly complacent voters, and I believe the turnout will set records, this fall. Nobody will doubt the will of the people.
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ChesBay--This is a reminder to those who vote for democracy. After you vote, keep an eye on the people you elected. We thought our officials would just do their jobs, right? They need supervision by the people. Lack of attention is what got us into this mess. Those stinkers sneaked in while we were busy doing other other stuff. Never again.
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@ChesBay
I think the word you mean is "energized".
"Enervated" means to drain of energy, to exhaust.
Still, I get your point and I hope you're correct.
1
Britain created the welfare state in 1948: free medicine for all, social housing on a massive scale, cradle to grave care. The country was nearly bankrupt at the time. A combination of national pride and American determination to sink Britain as a world power left the country out of the Marshall plan. While the rest of Europe was sowing La Dolce Vita in the early Fifties, Britain still had rationing. But there was a national consensus that change was necessary, financed through massive taxation of the better-off.
Eventually things changed in the 70s, Thatcher/Reagan, etc. But the fact is that, if the political will exists, backed by a majority of people on both sides of the political divide, it is possible to make the state a provider of benefits for all. But in Britain that was possible after the shock of WWII. What can make that possible in an America in which nearly half votes for Trump, or goes
to churches where the preachers would have felt comfortable with the Inquisition, or collects an armoury of guns, or flies the Confederate flag, I don't know.
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@GG2018
Britain still had colonies after the war and until 79 when it finally lost the "independent" Rhodesia it paid for its welfare state off of them. In 79 when reagan got elected Thatcher duped reagan and he literally gave her speeches word for word over here and part of deregulation here was to allow for the British to take the money they were making by gaming our markets home. Until deregulation there were strict limits in how much money anyone could take out of the USA and for very good reason. The destruction of our economy in the 80's is exactly why those regulations existed. Without them we were taken apart literally and figuratively and sold off to parts foreign for t he benefit of others.
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@GG2018: You might want to do a little more research about the Marshall plan: "This is utter myth. Britain actually received more than a third more Marshall Aid than West Germany - $2.7 billion as against $1.7 billion. She in fact pocketed the largest share of any European nation. The truth is that the post-war Labour Government, advised by its resident economic pundits, freely chose not to make industrial modernisation the central theme in her use of Marshall Aid." from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/marshall_01.shtml. And Thatcher and Reagan were the 1980's, not 1970's.
5
GG2018,
We just do what we always have done. Pass and implement without them.
Once they taste and see and feel the betterment and results the people always want to use and keep them.
Weekends. 8hr days. Soc. Sec. Medicare. ACA. Hwys. Libraries. Police 'n Fire. Postal service. Farm subsidies. Public Schools. Corp./business subsidies. VAcare. Public Parks. Food Stamps. Sewer systm. Unemployment Ins. Welfare. FEMA. etc. etc...
5
Republicans often still believe the voodoo economics that tax cuts will result in increased tax revenues via economic expansion as a result of the cuts - a concept repeatedly proven to be false/voodoo baloney. But it is clear that Federal budgets and projections into the future are too messy for voters to really care much about - and part of that lack of caring is general lack of caring about the future, especially by GOPites who think we don't need to address our glaring unsustainability problems like climate change since some miracle technology will save us (or Armageddon will make it all pointless anyway). Such people have no business being involved in government, period - they are a very dangerous threat to our children. Thanks for mentioning the fact that Clinton/Congress' policies of the 1990s managed to actually balance the Federal budget by 2000 - a serious achievement. There was absolutely no justification for W. and the GOP to then cut taxes while increasing spending for the war on terrorism at the same time - incredibly irresponsible on both counts. So apart from Obama's deficit spending to save the economy from a depression, which presidents had the highest average budget deficits as a % of GDP since 1960? Why of course, Reagan/HW Bush and W. Bush.
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It's worse than that. It's not that Republicans believe in voodoo economics. It's that they don't CARE. @cljuniper
There are two types of debt. On the Democratic side it is fueled by aid to people in need. On the Republican side it is fueled as tax relief to spur business spending, though it those in charge hope it mainly filters into their campaign coffers.
Both of these causes of debt play out differently in the real world.
28
Perhaps our main economic problem is not one of economics at all, but one of economics education. A reader, max, said in a reply to one of my comments:
"So much of our economic issues could be solved if people understood that the US cannot run out of money, and how hard it is to cause hyper-inflation from government spending alone."
Let me suggest a way of thinking about gov money that I hope will promote this understanding.
The first idea is that gov operations, militarily, infrastructure, research, etc. are NOT paid for or limited by taxes or borrowing.
The gov doesn't need your money. It can (thru the FED) create as much as it needs out of thin air. Just think about where YOUR money came from in the first place. Unless you have a printing press in your basement, it came from the federal gov. (This isn't quite right. Banks can create a limited amount, but 2008 showed how limited this is.)
But there's a catch. If the gov needs to create too much money to do the things we want it to do, we may not be able to make enough stuff to soak that money up & will have too much money chasing not enough stuff, i.e. excessive inflation.
But that's easy to solve & where taxes come in. Taxes allow the gov to take back the excess money & prevent inflation. The purpose of taxes is to adjust the amount of money in the private sector. That is what max is telling us.
Now if there are shortages, e.g. oil, we may produce so little, we can't tax enough. That's we we get hyperinflation.
23
Mr. Suderman has no idea of economics. Here are some questions and answers for him.
1. When will the USA run out of money?
The day after the NFL runs out of points. The only thing that limits our printing of money is inflation which is caused by not being able to produce enough stuff to soak up the new money, e.g., shortages, like of oil.
2. When did too much federal debt EVER have a negative effect on the US economy?
Beats me.
3. What has happened ALL 6 times we have significantly (10% or more) paid down the debt?
We have suffered a depression. In fact, ALL of our 6 depressions followed paying down the debt.
4. When did we pay off or even pay down the huge WWII debt?
What happened was we actually increased the debt 75% from 1946 to 1973 & enjoyed great prosperity. As the economy grew, the debt simply became insignificant.
1. How is needed money is added to a growing economy?
A. Banks can create a certain amount by making loans, but we have just seen what happens when they create too much.
B. We can repatriate money sent abroad. We haven't been able to do that for a long time, & it seems unlikely we ever will.
C. It comes from the government via deficit spending.
5. What caused the Great Recession of 2008?
Except for a brief period in 2003, from 1996 to 2006, money flowed OUT of the private sector. The same thing happened before each of the 6 depressions in 3. To get needed money people and businesses turned to banks which became overleveraged. Crash!
15
With a Trump administration
And Dem leaders demonstration
The Left had to rise
To no one's surprise
Which should occasion Trumpish frustration.
Narishkeit is a Trumpian trait,
Exhibited early and late,
Foolishness on grand scale
That makes observers pale,
There’s a vacuum ’neath Donald Trump’s pate.
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An expansive left which would only exacerbate the debt.
5
@Southern Boy - And that would be like 1946 to 1973 wheh the alreadu huge debt increased 75% and GDP growth averaged 3.8% and real median household income surged 74%.
What's not to like?
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@Southern Boy: Yes, but who cares? Certainly not the GOP.
10
@Southern Boy
Debt as a result of social spending vs. HUGE tax cuts for the extremely wealthy would at the very least insure many more Americans would benefit vs. the rich indulging in more Rolex watches or stock options purchases.
A strong, democratic nation is one that values its citizens, invests in the country's health, education, and infrastructure.
How's the education level there in 'rural Tennessee' these days? Yikes, found my answer:
" . . . Only 17% of public high school graduates are prepared for college-level courses in reading, English, math, and science. 2015 was the first time Tennessee fourth-grade students ranked in the top half of states in math, after ranking 46th just four years before."
https://tnscore.org/research-reports/reports/
16
Yes some people are starting to get it, and maybe the word socialism is becoming less of a swear word. However, what we're already seeing, and are likely to see more of in the run-up to the election, are the required newspaper articles about the supposed disarray in the Democratic party party. I'm starting to equate it with the constant false equivalency during the presidential election, when no matter how atrocious Donald Trump's behavior and goals were, it was always required to chant Benghazi and emails, even on the part of papers like the New York Times, which I expected better of.
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Georgia Lockwood--Those who don't get it, are the same folks who didn't know that hated Obamacare was the same as popular ACA. I hope, they are getting some clues, now. Democratic socialism is a good thing for most people. The most successful countries, in the world, have some combination of socialism and democracy. Everybody gets a slice of the pie. (Rich Republicans will still be rich, but they will whine, anyway. They always do. Ignore them.) Get the money out of politics, so our country won't have to endure a replay of the last few years, ever again, and everyone's vote will count. It will probably take an amendment to the Constitution. Support that, for the good of democracy. You don't really value what you have, until you almost lose it.
6
@Georgia Lockwood It's the failure of some people to read history books. Socialism is a nasty word for a good reason.
1
@PDS it's the failure of some people to read Forbes. Yes, Forbes that source of "nasty" socialist ideas(!…!). In 2018 Forbes published a list of the "Worlds Happiest Countries" and what do they all have in common? A Democratic Socialist social system. READ the article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2018/03/27/ranked-the-10-happi...
"...single-payer system would cost around $32 trillion over a decade, and while that might be less, overall, than the current partially private system, the challenge would be to finance the enormous increase in government spending on health care."
What that means is that health insurance is compulsory and added to income deductions like a payroll tax. It would be more than cost neutral, because private health insurance deductions would then disappear.
Come on, people, this is not rocket science! Look at Europe, it has been working there since 1873. Or look at Canada, or England. It requires just a different kind of budgeting calculations. But it would save money in the end. Health insurance in Europe is ~40% cheaper than in the US and delivers superior results.
What's not to like!?
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@Kara Ben Nemsi...
We the People of the USA still lack the right to h/c that's common for generations in all other democracies. Canada in the 60s, UK the 40s, Sweden the 50s, France, the 70s. Not all are single payer, but they regulate insurance costs. They're capitalist nations, but they don't let profit be 1st priority over citizens' health and lives.
See True Cost Blog -- dates when countries started universal health care.
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@Kara Ben Nemsi
You're right - and the reason we don't already have universal healthcare started in the Truman years - the AMA campaigned against "socialized medicine" because they didn't want to integrate the hospitals. They lobbied in the 1950s with $5 million - which would be $52 million in today's dollars. Things have been fishy a long time.
1
@Kara Ben Nemsi
"delivers superior results. "
That is false.
https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/dcpc/research/articles/concord-2.htm
1